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I don't think the number of features is too problematic if it is properly gated. Python having 'http.server' or a Fractions module or tkinter or a matrix multip

I don't think the number of features is too problematic if it is properly gated. Python having 'http.server' or a Fractions module or tkinter or a matrix multiplication operator comes off as a pleasant surprise, it doesn't hamper the onboarding experience. However, async, typing syntax, multiple string formatting syntaxes, and so on all do. The ship is being helmed irresponsibly in this regard. Letting decorator and keyword asyncio coexist, as well as threads and multiprocess, just feels like a huge mess.

wslh 10y ago
> Letting decorator and keyword asyncio coexist, as well as threads and multiprocess, just feels like a huge mess. That's the main issue. You can work with asyncio and threads at the same time but you need to know very well how the frameworks work.
- dom0 10y ago
  Raw multi-threading was always a "blowing your feet of" feature in almost any way imaginable. That's true for Python as well and not only for use together with asyncio (but in this context even more so, I agree). No one should write production MT code based on pthread-esque abstractions in any language without knowing very very well what they're doing.
  - Fiahil 10y ago
    I think you're right. I have python threads and processes meshed together in production code, and it's not pretty to look at. Sometimes it would crash for no reason, like this morning, when a job got stuck because one of its child process refused to die properly, thus blocking the join.
  - lmm 10y ago
    Due to the GIL and resulting coarse-grained nature of Python threading, it was very easy to write Python code that accidentally worked most of the time.
    - dom0 10y ago
      Interpreter instructions in CPython are atomic (due to the GIL, actually) and calling into extension functions is a single instruction (incidentally). This makes it impossible to corrupt built-in data structures, even if no locks are used. In some simple cases this is sufficient, esp. if no one's going to run it with !CPython... This is also neat for other reasons (think sandboxing).
pmontra 10y ago
I agree that the features are not a problem. A large standard library and lots of packages are actually very welcome. The problem is the very design of the language, from the beginning. I inherited a couple of Python 2.7 projects recently and after many years of toying with it I'm finally using Python seriously. Well, the syntax of the language is a mix of strange decisions. Part functional, part object oriented, not well designed in any of those parts. The so old school looking special __functions__. The annoying syntax errors one gets when refactoring and moving code around courtesy of the useless : and significant spacing. The even more annoying indentation errors when copy pasting code from the editor to the interactive interpreter. ["a", "b"].join(".") and ".".split("a.b") or other permutations, I still can't remember which one is correct. It's not a very inviting home to live in, a kind of non euclidean space. It's strange that Python got where it is today. Maybe it's because among the languages that were big 10 years ago it's more immediate to work with than Java an C++, because PHP is despised by many professionals especially pre v7 when it was really ugly, because nobody bothered to build and maintain a numpy for Ruby and because JavaScript become big only recently. I feel that Python is good enough to do almost everything but not particularly nice to look at. However I want to end on a lighter note quoting Matz. "No language can be perfect for everyone. I tried to make Ruby perfect for me, but maybe it's not perfect for you. The perfect language for Guido van Rossum is probably Python."
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- goatlover 10y ago
  I feel that Python is more readable than most languages, and nice to look at it. I also like the magic functions. And whitespace never bothered me a second. I have the same amount of whitespace errors as I do forgetting a semicolon in PHP, which is infrequently. I don't know why you would consider JavaScript a better option with all its warts. But you are right about the Python ecosystem. It is massive in the scientific and statistical computing. The other scripting languages outside of R aren't in the same ballpark in that domain.
rocqua 10y ago
In this case, it seems like things were pulled into the standard library to quickly. This then lead to conflicting ideas in the standard library.

wslh 10y ago

> Letting decorator and keyword asyncio coexist, as well as threads and multiprocess, just feels like a huge mess. That's the main issue. You can work with asyncio and threads at the same time but you need to know very well how the frameworks work.

dom0 10y ago
Raw multi-threading was always a "blowing your feet of" feature in almost any way imaginable. That's true for Python as well and not only for use together with asyncio (but in this context even more so, I agree). No one should write production MT code based on pthread-esque abstractions in any language without knowing very very well what they're doing.
- Fiahil 10y ago
  I think you're right. I have python threads and processes meshed together in production code, and it's not pretty to look at. Sometimes it would crash for no reason, like this morning, when a job got stuck because one of its child process refused to die properly, thus blocking the join.
- lmm 10y ago
  Due to the GIL and resulting coarse-grained nature of Python threading, it was very easy to write Python code that accidentally worked most of the time.
  - dom0 10y ago
    Interpreter instructions in CPython are atomic (due to the GIL, actually) and calling into extension functions is a single instruction (incidentally). This makes it impossible to corrupt built-in data structures, even if no locks are used. In some simple cases this is sufficient, esp. if no one's going to run it with !CPython... This is also neat for other reasons (think sandboxing).

pmontra 10y ago

I agree that the features are not a problem. A large standard library and lots of packages are actually very welcome. The problem is the very design of the language, from the beginning. I inherited a couple of Python 2.7 projects recently and after many years of toying with it I'm finally using Python seriously. Well, the syntax of the language is a mix of strange decisions. Part functional, part object oriented, not well designed in any of those parts. The so old school looking special __functions__. The annoying syntax errors one gets when refactoring and moving code around courtesy of the useless : and significant spacing. The even more annoying indentation errors when copy pasting code from the editor to the interactive interpreter. ["a", "b"].join(".") and ".".split("a.b") or other permutations, I still can't remember which one is correct. It's not a very inviting home to live in, a kind of non euclidean space. It's strange that Python got where it is today. Maybe it's because among the languages that were big 10 years ago it's more immediate to work with than Java an C++, because PHP is despised by many professionals especially pre v7 when it was really ugly, because nobody bothered to build and maintain a numpy for Ruby and because JavaScript become big only recently. I feel that Python is good enough to do almost everything but not particularly nice to look at. However I want to end on a lighter note quoting Matz. "No language can be perfect for everyone. I tried to make Ruby perfect for me, but maybe it's not perfect for you. The perfect language for Guido van Rossum is probably Python."

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goatlover 10y ago
I feel that Python is more readable than most languages, and nice to look at it. I also like the magic functions. And whitespace never bothered me a second. I have the same amount of whitespace errors as I do forgetting a semicolon in PHP, which is infrequently. I don't know why you would consider JavaScript a better option with all its warts. But you are right about the Python ecosystem. It is massive in the scientific and statistical computing. The other scripting languages outside of R aren't in the same ballpark in that domain.

rocqua 10y ago

In this case, it seems like things were pulled into the standard library to quickly. This then lead to conflicting ideas in the standard library.