4 ms·

This is part of what led to me originally choosing Python in the first place so many years ago. I really liked Haskell but I found it hard to get things done wi

This is part of what led to me originally choosing Python in the first place so many years ago. I really liked Haskell but I found it hard to get things done with it. I tried to build out a large project in it, and with a deadline looming, decided to try building the rest out in Python. Python got out of the way for me and made it easy for me to "think out loud" -- perhaps this is what you mean by "hand-tools". I was a lot earlier in my maturation at that point, but I still think my intuitions were sound. I like languages like Python which lack syntactic noise and make it easier to write compact self-explanatory things. I used to hate JavaScript but with ES7 onwards, I've begun to like it much more because it's easy to write compact, self-explanatory things. I was forced to write Java for work a few months ago and rudely awakened in a painful manner. Yes, you adapt to it but deep down inside, you know that it sucks and you prefer going back to your better alternative.

claudeganon 6y ago
Python is one of the few languages that I feel I can think in. I measure this by my ability to have “a ha” moments when away from my desk, where my brain has puzzled out how to solve something in idle moments (with at least a rough outline of the code). I don’t have trouble working things out in other languages, as needed, but rarely find myself having these little bursts of inspiration.
- yowlingcat 6y ago
  What I liked about Python when I picked it up was how simple it was. The preference for making sure there was only "one right way to do things" made it easy for me to focus on my business logic and not worry about syntax. Although this has been to a certain extent lost, I think the stylistic decision remains present in the gigantic ecosystem. That's another thing I love about Python. There's such a high chance that someone's already written something that would take me lifetimes to write, and it's so easy for me to just pull it in and use it.

claudeganon 6y ago

Python is one of the few languages that I feel I can think in. I measure this by my ability to have “a ha” moments when away from my desk, where my brain has puzzled out how to solve something in idle moments (with at least a rough outline of the code). I don’t have trouble working things out in other languages, as needed, but rarely find myself having these little bursts of inspiration.

yowlingcat 6y ago
What I liked about Python when I picked it up was how simple it was. The preference for making sure there was only "one right way to do things" made it easy for me to focus on my business logic and not worry about syntax. Although this has been to a certain extent lost, I think the stylistic decision remains present in the gigantic ecosystem. That's another thing I love about Python. There's such a high chance that someone's already written something that would take me lifetimes to write, and it's so easy for me to just pull it in and use it.