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It might be my own pro-typed-language bias showing but this migration from byte strings to unicode strings is really where dynamically typed languages really do

by simias 7y ago

It might be my own pro-typed-language bias showing but this migration from byte strings to unicode strings is really where dynamically typed languages really don't shine. If we imagine an alternative reality where Rust started only with byte-strings and added unicode as an afterthought like Python did, you'd definitely face a massive amount of churn but at least the compiler would yell at you every time you pass a byte string where unicode is expected and vice-versa. Once you'll have fixed all of the errors in the vast majority of cases there's a good chance that your program would work again. It would be very annoying but at least you know clearly where the problems occur. In Python on the other hand this type of code refactoring is very painful in my experience. You may end up with the same function being called sometimes with unicode and sometimes with bytes. And then you have to look at the call stack to figure out where it comes from. And then you realize that you end up with, say, a list of records which sometimes contain unicode and sometimes byte arrays depending on whether the code that updated them used the old or the new version etc... And if it turns out that you can't easily reproduce the problem and you just get a bug report sent from somewhere in production then Good Luck; Have Fun.

monoideism 7y ago
> added unicode as an afterthought like Python did I agree with you on the benefits of static typing, but let's clear: Python didn't add unicode as an "afterthought". The initial release of Python predates the initial release of the Unicode standard, by almost a year. Furthermore, even if this were not the case, it took a while before Unicode got any significant adoption among programming languages, well after the release of Python 1.0. I think Java in 1996 was the first language to adopt Unicode.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  Another useful red letter date for language/tool adoption is the standardization of UTF-8 in 1993. Before UTF-8 there were a lot of tools, especially in the POSIX world, that didn't feel comfortable without an 8-bit safe encoding format. Python 2 was after UTF-8 in 2000, so with hindsight could have had the foresight to pull this bandaid off then (before a large influx of users), but a corresponding complaint about UTF-8 is that because it was 8-bit safe, a lot of tools also felt they could kick the can on dealing with it more directly (as a default), and Python 2 seems to be among them. Hindsight has told us a lot about the problems to expect (and exactly why Python 3 did what it felt it had to do), but they probably weren't as clear in 2000. (In further hindsight, imagine if Astral Plane Emoji had been standard and been common around 2000 instead of 2010 how much further we might be in consistent Unicode implementation today. I suppose that makes 2010 another red letter date for Unicode adoption.)
  - im3w1l 7y ago
    And it was much later than 1993 that unicode conclusively defeated latin-1. Something like 2010?
  - monoideism 7y ago
    > Python 2 was after UTF-8 in 2000, so with hindsight could have had the foresight to pull this bandaid off then That's true, but I would argue that given the difficulty and backlash we've seen moving from Python 2 to Python 3, such a move would have risked destroying Python's rapid forward momentum and condemned it to the ash heap of programming language history.
    - monoideism 7y ago
      To add on to this, I'm not agreeing with the backlash from Python 2 to 3. And I wouldn't want it in the ash heap of history - I definitely think there's a definite place for nice, quick, easy dynamic langs like Python, particularly for exploratory programming. I'm just saying the move to Python 3 turned out to be a huge deal to a lot of people (it surprised me), and for that reason, trying such a big jump at Python 2 would have been risky and could have derailed Python's forward progress at a critical point. Would the downvoters like to share their reasons for disagreement?
      - WorldMaker 7y ago
        I think the question goes back to the size and scale of users at the 1 to 2 jump versus the 2 to 3 jump. Python didn't really start to hit most of its "forward progress" in terms of both user adoption and being so deeply integrated into systems. There was no Django for Python 1, for one example. As another example, I'm pretty sure Debian and its heavy reliance on Python for so much of its system scripting didn't happen until Python 2, either, but a quick search didn't turn up a reliable date. It probably would have been a lot less risky with so many fewer daily users, so many fewer huge projects to migrate.
        monoideism 7y ago

by simias 7y ago

monoideism 7y ago

> added unicode as an afterthought like Python did I agree with you on the benefits of static typing, but let's clear: Python didn't add unicode as an "afterthought". The initial release of Python predates the initial release of the Unicode standard, by almost a year. Furthermore, even if this were not the case, it took a while before Unicode got any significant adoption among programming languages, well after the release of Python 1.0. I think Java in 1996 was the first language to adopt Unicode.

WorldMaker 7y ago
Another useful red letter date for language/tool adoption is the standardization of UTF-8 in 1993. Before UTF-8 there were a lot of tools, especially in the POSIX world, that didn't feel comfortable without an 8-bit safe encoding format. Python 2 was after UTF-8 in 2000, so with hindsight could have had the foresight to pull this bandaid off then (before a large influx of users), but a corresponding complaint about UTF-8 is that because it was 8-bit safe, a lot of tools also felt they could kick the can on dealing with it more directly (as a default), and Python 2 seems to be among them. Hindsight has told us a lot about the problems to expect (and exactly why Python 3 did what it felt it had to do), but they probably weren't as clear in 2000. (In further hindsight, imagine if Astral Plane Emoji had been standard and been common around 2000 instead of 2010 how much further we might be in consistent Unicode implementation today. I suppose that makes 2010 another red letter date for Unicode adoption.)
- im3w1l 7y ago
  And it was much later than 1993 that unicode conclusively defeated latin-1. Something like 2010?
- monoideism 7y ago
  > Python 2 was after UTF-8 in 2000, so with hindsight could have had the foresight to pull this bandaid off then That's true, but I would argue that given the difficulty and backlash we've seen moving from Python 2 to Python 3, such a move would have risked destroying Python's rapid forward momentum and condemned it to the ash heap of programming language history.
  - monoideism 7y ago
    To add on to this, I'm not agreeing with the backlash from Python 2 to 3. And I wouldn't want it in the ash heap of history - I definitely think there's a definite place for nice, quick, easy dynamic langs like Python, particularly for exploratory programming. I'm just saying the move to Python 3 turned out to be a huge deal to a lot of people (it surprised me), and for that reason, trying such a big jump at Python 2 would have been risky and could have derailed Python's forward progress at a critical point. Would the downvoters like to share their reasons for disagreement?
    - WorldMaker 7y ago
      I think the question goes back to the size and scale of users at the 1 to 2 jump versus the 2 to 3 jump. Python didn't really start to hit most of its "forward progress" in terms of both user adoption and being so deeply integrated into systems. There was no Django for Python 1, for one example. As another example, I'm pretty sure Debian and its heavy reliance on Python for so much of its system scripting didn't happen until Python 2, either, but a quick search didn't turn up a reliable date. It probably would have been a lot less risky with so many fewer daily users, so many fewer huge projects to migrate.
      - monoideism 7y ago