4 ms·

Python is still vital and thriving but I wouldn't be surprised if its market share is declining (slowly). As you say, it's dominant for data science... but rece

Python is still vital and thriving but I wouldn't be surprised if its market share is declining (slowly). As you say, it's dominant for data science... but recently it and R were the only practical choices... now other languages (Julia, for example) are valid options. The development of alternative Jupyter (formerly IPython) kernels has accelerated adoption of other languages. Similarly, a few years back it seemed like Flask and Django were vastly dominant frameworks for building APIs, now similar frameworks exist in tons of languages. None of this is to imply that Python is anywhere close to dead, but my personal opinion is that "peak Python" is behind us.

blandflakes 6y ago
I want this to be true, by the way. As I mention in some other comment, I think Python is rather mediocre as an actual language for building software. Its appeal cannot be denied, but a majority of my peers would really like to use a language that has its tooling shit together. Python is the only language I've had to deploy that makes me understand why anybody would want to use containers.
- notacoward 6y ago
  Maybe we should separate the evolution of languages from the evolution of package/versioning systems. They do tend to go hand in hand, but that has more to do with logistics and organizational issues than any technical necessity.
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    But like R has a great packaing system, and it copied Perl, which is much older than Python. Meanwhile Python has a bunch of incompatible packaging systems which cause so much pain to so many programmers. Did you know that pip won't even resolve dependencies, and will break your programs silently? I certainly didn't, because Python wasn't my first language and therefore I assumed that the package manager will handle dependencies. Like seriously, when a language designed by statisticians for statisticians (R) has a better packaging story than everyone's second favourite language, something has gone horribly wrong.
    - notacoward 6y ago
      > R has a great packaing system, and it copied Perl I almost used Perl as an example of Python's inverse - a crappy language wrapped in a good packaging system. For its time CPAN was pretty great. All of the things today that people are likely to hold up as being better drew inspiration from it. > which is much older than Python Perl 1987, Python 1989. So yes it's older, but much older?
      - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
        Fair, I realised that the difference wasn't that large after I posted. I'm just so annoyed by Python's (lack of a) packaging system that it makes me prone to hyperbole. It's been frustrating me at work all week, and I suspect that it will be a low-grade annoyance for me in my career for the next few years, as I'm a Data Scientist and hence need to deal with Python a lot.
        int_19h 6y ago
        pip is a packaging system, and it ships out of the box with Python. It may not be the best one around, but there certainly isn't a lack of one.
        disgruntledphd2 6y ago
        Does it ensure that packages in the environment are consistent with one another? If not, I'm not sure what it does that curl won't do.
        int_19h 6y ago
        curl won't resolve dependencies.
- meowface 6y ago
  I love Python, and it's my first and most-used language, but I definitely agree. I want something that takes the best parts of Python, is compatible with most existing Python code, and has a much better tooling ecosystem and better options for static typing. Spending a bit of time with Rust's tooling, static analysis, and "if it compiles it's pretty likely to work" (at least way more so than with Python) definitely emphasizes a lot of Python's flaws.
  - kortex 6y ago
    Have you tried writing python as if types were mandatory? It takes a lot of discipline but it's a totally different beast with strict mypy checking.
    - meowface 6y ago
      Yes, I've started to more in the past few weeks, and I've enabled stricter Pylance checking in VS Code. It's definitely giving me more Rust-like productivity and reliability improvements.

blandflakes 6y ago

I want this to be true, by the way. As I mention in some other comment, I think Python is rather mediocre as an actual language for building software. Its appeal cannot be denied, but a majority of my peers would really like to use a language that has its tooling shit together. Python is the only language I've had to deploy that makes me understand why anybody would want to use containers.

notacoward 6y ago
Maybe we should separate the evolution of languages from the evolution of package/versioning systems. They do tend to go hand in hand, but that has more to do with logistics and organizational issues than any technical necessity.
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  But like R has a great packaing system, and it copied Perl, which is much older than Python. Meanwhile Python has a bunch of incompatible packaging systems which cause so much pain to so many programmers. Did you know that pip won't even resolve dependencies, and will break your programs silently? I certainly didn't, because Python wasn't my first language and therefore I assumed that the package manager will handle dependencies. Like seriously, when a language designed by statisticians for statisticians (R) has a better packaging story than everyone's second favourite language, something has gone horribly wrong.
  - notacoward 6y ago
    > R has a great packaing system, and it copied Perl I almost used Perl as an example of Python's inverse - a crappy language wrapped in a good packaging system. For its time CPAN was pretty great. All of the things today that people are likely to hold up as being better drew inspiration from it. > which is much older than Python Perl 1987, Python 1989. So yes it's older, but much older?
    - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
      Fair, I realised that the difference wasn't that large after I posted. I'm just so annoyed by Python's (lack of a) packaging system that it makes me prone to hyperbole. It's been frustrating me at work all week, and I suspect that it will be a low-grade annoyance for me in my career for the next few years, as I'm a Data Scientist and hence need to deal with Python a lot.
      - int_19h 6y ago
        pip is a packaging system, and it ships out of the box with Python. It may not be the best one around, but there certainly isn't a lack of one.
        disgruntledphd2 6y ago
        Does it ensure that packages in the environment are consistent with one another? If not, I'm not sure what it does that curl won't do.
        int_19h 6y ago
        curl won't resolve dependencies.
meowface 6y ago
I love Python, and it's my first and most-used language, but I definitely agree. I want something that takes the best parts of Python, is compatible with most existing Python code, and has a much better tooling ecosystem and better options for static typing. Spending a bit of time with Rust's tooling, static analysis, and "if it compiles it's pretty likely to work" (at least way more so than with Python) definitely emphasizes a lot of Python's flaws.
- kortex 6y ago
  Have you tried writing python as if types were mandatory? It takes a lot of discipline but it's a totally different beast with strict mypy checking.
  - meowface 6y ago
    Yes, I've started to more in the past few weeks, and I've enabled stricter Pylance checking in VS Code. It's definitely giving me more Rust-like productivity and reliability improvements.