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Why Python keeps growing, explained

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Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#91

Post by edwiecron »

Lyngbakr wrote: post #81

I think one reason for Python growing popularity is because it's become the default tool in some domains whether it is the best tool or not. This week our Director ordered a total rewrite of two years of work in Python. His rationale: it's what everyone else uses in this space. No reason specific to our use case, just simply to follow the herd. I realise that a large community translates into easy hiring and rich eco…

If Python was a market, this would clearly be the top.

There was a time when all you had to learn was Java or C++ or (language or tool here). Somehow, this time when we standardize, it will be different.

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#92

Post by traverseda »

FpUser wrote: post #89
traverseda wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and they don’t care - or know about - concurrency, memory efficiency, L2 cache misses due to pointer chasing. Also if I (a programmer) want to write really really fast code I'm probably reaching for tools like tensorflow, numpy, or jax. So there's not much incentive for me to switch to a more efficient language when as near as I can tell the best tooling for dealing with SIMD or weird gpu bullshit seems to be being…

>"Also if I (a programmer) want to write really really fast code I'm probably reaching for tools like tensorflow, numpy, or jax." Very limited view which ignores way too many areas.

Sure, examples?

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#93

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

pletnes wrote: post #11

Python keeps growing in number of users because it’s easy to get started, has libraries to load basically any data, and to perform any task. It’s frequently the second best language but it’s the second best language for anything. By the time a python programmer has «graduated» to learning a second language, exponential growth has created a bunch of new python programmers, most of which don’t consider themselves progr…

Your comment is super interesting because it suggests Python has evolved in a direction opposite to the Python Paradox - http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html

Whereas before you could get smarter programmers using Python, now because of the exponential growth of Python, the median Python programmer is likely someone with little or no software engineering or computer architecture background who is basically just gluing together a lot of libraries.

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#94

Post by extasia »

webmaven wrote: post #45
boxed wrote: post #36

If the author of this article reads this: you have an error in a heading: > Using Python for and artificial intelligence for what and AI?

Based on the text that follows, I would guess that the missing term is "machine learning".

Funny enough this sort of sentence, i.e one with a missing word, is a very common ML training task for large language models like Gpt3: the models objective is to predict the correct word from a set of possible answers.

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#95

Post by vgatherps »

joenot443 wrote: post #74
dagw wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically something that takes 1 second in C++ will take 10 seconds (if you write efficient python and lean heavily on fast libraries) to 10 minutes in python. But the rest of your point stands

Damn! Is the rule of thumb really a 10x performance hit between Python/C++? I don’t doubt you’re correct, I’m just thinking of all the unnecessary cycles I put my poor CPU through.

Outside cases where Python is used as a thin wrapper around some C library (simple networking code, numpy, etc) 10x is frankly quite conservative. Depending on the problem space and how aggressively you optimize, it's easily multiple orders of magnitude.

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#96

Post by DeathArrow »

I think people embrace Python because they think it's easy to learn and use. While that might be true, the real complexity lies not in learning and using a language (unless it's Rust) but in learning the libraries, frameworks, idioms, dos, don'ts, tooling.

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#97

Post by sva_ »

joenot443 wrote: post #74
dagw wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically something that takes 1 second in C++ will take 10 seconds (if you write efficient python and lean heavily on fast libraries) to 10 minutes in python. But the rest of your point stands

Damn! Is the rule of thumb really a 10x performance hit between Python/C++? I don’t doubt you’re correct, I’m just thinking of all the unnecessary cycles I put my poor CPU through.

It really depends on what you're doing, but I don't think it is generally accurate.

What slows Python down is generally the "everything is an object" attitude of the interpreter. I.e. you call a function, the interpreter has to first create an object of the thing you're calling.

In C++, due to zero-cost abstractions, this usually just boils down to a CALL instruction preceded by a bunch of PUSH instructions in assembly, based on the number of parameters (and call convention). This is of course a lot faster than running through the abstractions of creating some Python object.

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#98

Post by SiempreViernes »

fredley wrote: post #41
samwillis wrote: post #31

I have been a heavy Python user now about 15 years, but for me now I'm increasingly reaching for modern JavaScript and particularly TypeScript to do the things I would have traditionally done with Python. ES modules, fat arrow expressions, and all the other nice new syntax and library features have made the language so more pleasant to use. In many ways the ergonomics of TypeScript in particular are far superior to P…

I am going this way too. I recently tried to onboard a few contractors with limited python experience. It took several deep sessions to work out why they couldn't get an environment set up. After 10+ years I've never come across the install certificates command. There's still no way to get a dev environment with a specific version of Python working with one command that works reliably everywhere. pyenv isn't even pac…

> However I'll probably wait until there's a really good Jupyter Notebook equivalent... Ha, take that Observable! >:)

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#100

Post by revskill »

Garbages keep growing, too.

It's really hard to trace a Python bug based on codebase, due to its stricly bugly indentation sensitive for space/tabs.

I rather work on a JS codebase than a python codebase.

But i consider Python coders genius, because they can go deep into rabbit hole really well.

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