7 ms·

I would actually like to make the exact opposite prediction. A generation of developers grew up on Python, Ruby, etc., rather than C, and they were all brought

by nilkn 6y ago

I would actually like to make the exact opposite prediction. A generation of developers grew up on Python, Ruby, etc., rather than C, and they were all brought up on this notion that performance doesn't matter much anymore because computers keep getting faster. But the problems we're solving with computers keep getting harder (in terms of the amount of computation required). These days, I can comfortably state that I prefer Rust over Python, even for simple programs. I prefer it because the type system is much more useful than Python 3 with mypy, the performance is extraordinary out of the box, the language is often just as expressive, and I rarely have any actual issues with the borrow checker. I also prefer it because I've had far too many experiences with Python where supposedly performance didn't matter... until it did and Python was no longer appropriate. I think we're entering into a generation of languages where things like Rust are going to start really seriously displacing C++, and as more people learn them they're even going to start displacing supposedly easier languages. Right now, few folks are going to learn Rust as an alternative to Python. But once they're exposed to it for other work and realize how productive they are, there's just going to be less of a need to reach for Python over time.

tptacek 6y ago
What is the thing happening in computing making the largest demands on compute performance? Data science and ML. And what's the lingua franca of data science and ML? Not even Java or Go, the managed compiled languages; no, it's Python.† You can see the phenomenon I'm talking about happen right now, in every HN thread where we push against the ocean trying to keep Electron from being a thing. What's going to happen first: Electron's runtime will become clever enough that its performance is tolerable even to nerds, or most Electron applications being rewritten in a language that forces programmers to manually manage memory? It's interesting, because Rust will probably be a part of the story that makes things like Electron tolerable! But the point isn't that Rust is a doomed language (it's not, it's going to be durably important), but rather that it's not going to be the language most programmers work in. † It's not pure Python, of course, but that's part of my point.
- nilkn 6y ago
  > What is the thing happening in computing making the largest demands on compute performance? Data science and ML. And what's the lingua franca of data science and ML? Not Java or Go, the managed compiled languages; no, it's Python. While ML might be the most demanding area in terms of computation, it's also a very small part of what developers in general do. My claim/prediction is more based on the notion that everything is becoming more compute-intensive. Where I work, we've probably incurred many, many millions of dollars of expenses (primarily hardware) due to the choice to write a lot of software in scripting languages over the years. We made that choice because C++ was so unwieldy in comparison that we figured we'd end up spending the same amount on C++ but in different ways. If we were starting from scratch today, I doubt we'd use scripting languages like Python for hardly any of our software, because there are choices available now that just didn't exist in the past. I'm not saying there's no place for something like Python, nor am I saying existing Python stuff should be rewritten. I think Python is going to continue being an extremely popular and important language. My claim/prediction is more that in the future we'll increasingly see Python chosen less for completely greenfield projects because there are now options that are high-level, well-designed, and extremely fast, and at least in my experience that has a lot of business value that is going to be harder and harder to ignore over time as it becomes more obvious.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    Candidly, there once was a vocal subculture of developers that would aver as to how much more comfortable they were in C than in Python (or Tcl or Perl), and, I'm told, in the long long ago there were them that said the same thing about assembly language. As an engineering manager, your job, if done well, would be to mollify those developers without conceding any ground to them, because the higher-level language was practically always the better option. People will burn money on compute no matter what language things are built in; they'll ship on Fargate instead of EC2, on-demand instead of reserved instances, RDS instead of running their own Postgres, Postgres instead of just using Sleepycat, anything at all instead of running their own iron, and on and on down the list. (All of this is out the window if you're shipping a browser! Or a hypervisor! Or an OS kernel! Or a new router! Or a AAA game!) Most of the time, the most expensive thing you can burn is an hour of programmer time. And, with your fluency in Rust and other languages, you must see immediately why someone would believe Rust is more time-consuming than, say, Java, let alone Python. Paul Graham got this part, at least, right in "Beating The Averages", when he noted how much more worrisome a competitor would be if their job reqs were for Perl programmer than if they were for C developers. The Perl company is actually getting lots of stuff done.
jariel 6y ago
"I can comfortably state that I prefer Rust over Python, even for simple programs" That's fine but that will never be generally true because Python is a high level language that will always have 10x more developers using it, including your Data Science prof, the high school kids learning 'basic programming', and all the AI researchers. And the tons of devs doing stuff for which Python just makes more sense.
- nine_k 6y ago
  I don't think it's appropriate to call a language with an advanced and useful type system, expressive syntax out of box, and reasonable macro support a "low level" language. Python, in comparison, lacks a lot. But it has a very low barrier of entry: the syntax is English-like, you can start doing something with very little knowledge of advanced features, and everything is easy to inspect and play with in a REPL.
  - jariel 6y ago
    "advanced and useful type system, expressive syntax out of box, and reasonable macro support" Those things are nice, but don't have anything to do really with the question here. Rust is designed to be 'close to the metal' and due to that fact, and a few other things - it's an 'advanced' programming language. Javascript, Python (and PHP at least today but that's changing) will have 10x a greater user base than Rust ever will. In the Enterprise, Java and C# are going nowhere. Rust will be the domain of only a specific set of software developers, and they will share that space with C++.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    Respectfully, I feel like you're dancing around what Python has that Rust does not. It's not the "English-like syntax" (with its invisible syntax errors). It's that Python, like most modern languages, manages memory automatically, and Rust does not. Rust doesn't for good reason! Not just zero-cost abstraction, but also, because for the applications it's designed for, it makes controlling memory much easier. There are ways in which writing a Rust program is probably easier than writing a Java program, in Rust's stomping grounds. It's just that it doesn't make things easier anywhere else.

by nilkn 6y ago

tptacek 6y ago

What is the thing happening in computing making the largest demands on compute performance? Data science and ML. And what's the lingua franca of data science and ML? Not even Java or Go, the managed compiled languages; no, it's Python.† You can see the phenomenon I'm talking about happen right now, in every HN thread where we push against the ocean trying to keep Electron from being a thing. What's going to happen first: Electron's runtime will become clever enough that its performance is tolerable even to nerds, or most Electron applications being rewritten in a language that forces programmers to manually manage memory? It's interesting, because Rust will probably be a part of the story that makes things like Electron tolerable! But the point isn't that Rust is a doomed language (it's not, it's going to be durably important), but rather that it's not going to be the language most programmers work in. † It's not pure Python, of course, but that's part of my point.

nilkn 6y ago
> What is the thing happening in computing making the largest demands on compute performance? Data science and ML. And what's the lingua franca of data science and ML? Not Java or Go, the managed compiled languages; no, it's Python. While ML might be the most demanding area in terms of computation, it's also a very small part of what developers in general do. My claim/prediction is more based on the notion that everything is becoming more compute-intensive. Where I work, we've probably incurred many, many millions of dollars of expenses (primarily hardware) due to the choice to write a lot of software in scripting languages over the years. We made that choice because C++ was so unwieldy in comparison that we figured we'd end up spending the same amount on C++ but in different ways. If we were starting from scratch today, I doubt we'd use scripting languages like Python for hardly any of our software, because there are choices available now that just didn't exist in the past. I'm not saying there's no place for something like Python, nor am I saying existing Python stuff should be rewritten. I think Python is going to continue being an extremely popular and important language. My claim/prediction is more that in the future we'll increasingly see Python chosen less for completely greenfield projects because there are now options that are high-level, well-designed, and extremely fast, and at least in my experience that has a lot of business value that is going to be harder and harder to ignore over time as it becomes more obvious.
- tptacek 6y ago
  Candidly, there once was a vocal subculture of developers that would aver as to how much more comfortable they were in C than in Python (or Tcl or Perl), and, I'm told, in the long long ago there were them that said the same thing about assembly language. As an engineering manager, your job, if done well, would be to mollify those developers without conceding any ground to them, because the higher-level language was practically always the better option. People will burn money on compute no matter what language things are built in; they'll ship on Fargate instead of EC2, on-demand instead of reserved instances, RDS instead of running their own Postgres, Postgres instead of just using Sleepycat, anything at all instead of running their own iron, and on and on down the list. (All of this is out the window if you're shipping a browser! Or a hypervisor! Or an OS kernel! Or a new router! Or a AAA game!) Most of the time, the most expensive thing you can burn is an hour of programmer time. And, with your fluency in Rust and other languages, you must see immediately why someone would believe Rust is more time-consuming than, say, Java, let alone Python. Paul Graham got this part, at least, right in "Beating The Averages", when he noted how much more worrisome a competitor would be if their job reqs were for Perl programmer than if they were for C developers. The Perl company is actually getting lots of stuff done.

jariel 6y ago

"I can comfortably state that I prefer Rust over Python, even for simple programs" That's fine but that will never be generally true because Python is a high level language that will always have 10x more developers using it, including your Data Science prof, the high school kids learning 'basic programming', and all the AI researchers. And the tons of devs doing stuff for which Python just makes more sense.

nine_k 6y ago
I don't think it's appropriate to call a language with an advanced and useful type system, expressive syntax out of box, and reasonable macro support a "low level" language. Python, in comparison, lacks a lot. But it has a very low barrier of entry: the syntax is English-like, you can start doing something with very little knowledge of advanced features, and everything is easy to inspect and play with in a REPL.
- jariel 6y ago
  "advanced and useful type system, expressive syntax out of box, and reasonable macro support" Those things are nice, but don't have anything to do really with the question here. Rust is designed to be 'close to the metal' and due to that fact, and a few other things - it's an 'advanced' programming language. Javascript, Python (and PHP at least today but that's changing) will have 10x a greater user base than Rust ever will. In the Enterprise, Java and C# are going nowhere. Rust will be the domain of only a specific set of software developers, and they will share that space with C++.
- tptacek 6y ago
  Respectfully, I feel like you're dancing around what Python has that Rust does not. It's not the "English-like syntax" (with its invisible syntax errors). It's that Python, like most modern languages, manages memory automatically, and Rust does not. Rust doesn't for good reason! Not just zero-cost abstraction, but also, because for the applications it's designed for, it makes controlling memory much easier. There are ways in which writing a Rust program is probably easier than writing a Java program, in Rust's stomping grounds. It's just that it doesn't make things easier anywhere else.