4 ms·

Thats a pretty awesome list!. I'd love for these to be the reasons but somehow I doubt any of us are that thorough. The only reason I used python is that it wa

by nstart 9y ago

Thats a pretty awesome list!. I'd love for these to be the reasons but somehow I doubt any of us are that thorough. The only reason I used python is that it was the first result that showed up in a Google search "write program to scrape web page" (ah beautiful soup. How I love thee!) The only reason I used flask was Udacitys course taught their web app course with it. I'll admit it, I've never actually analysed the benefits of a language in that way. My only judgement has been "mmm does it feel productive to use this language for what I'm doing". And "how quickly does the documentation take me to a hello world". Which is terribly subjective I admit. I'm suspecting I'm not alone. Or at least I hope I'm not :D. Yes. The embarrassment I feel is real. PS - it's also how I ended up using nginx over Apache. I couldn't really understand Apache in 30 minutes so I used nginx instead. I even remember an interview where I was asked why I used nginx over Apache and I said "um... because it was easier I guess". Definitely not best practices and I'm trying to be more objective nowadays.

uvtc 9y ago
> I'd love for these to be the reasons but somehow I doubt any of us are that thorough. Hm. I think there's a difference between reasons for trying out a language for some random task versus staying with it. I've bounced around between lots of different languages, and I suppose the list I presented above are why lots of people stay with Python. I think you're judgement of "mmm does it feel productive" roughly corresponds somewhat with the above list. Though I accidentally left off "good-enough docs", which I think is a given. > I couldn't really understand Apache in 30 minutes so I used nginx instead. Yeah. Though I think it has a lot to do with how good the docs are. Definitely, if a project can't tell me what it is, why I'd want to use it, and an overview of how it fits in, I'm very hesitant to pursue it further.

by nstart 9y ago

uvtc 9y ago

> I'd love for these to be the reasons but somehow I doubt any of us are that thorough. Hm. I think there's a difference between reasons for trying out a language for some random task versus staying with it. I've bounced around between lots of different languages, and I suppose the list I presented above are why lots of people stay with Python. I think you're judgement of "mmm does it feel productive" roughly corresponds somewhat with the above list. Though I accidentally left off "good-enough docs", which I think is a given. > I couldn't really understand Apache in 30 minutes so I used nginx instead. Yeah. Though I think it has a lot to do with how good the docs are. Definitely, if a project can't tell me what it is, why I'd want to use it, and an overview of how it fits in, I'm very hesitant to pursue it further.