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My favorite language has been Clojure for a long time, but given Python's popularity and widespread use I often wonder whether there is just some big underlying

by Tcepsa 6y ago

My favorite language has been Clojure for a long time, but given Python's popularity and widespread use I often wonder whether there is just some big underlying principle that would cause Python's appeal and superiority become clear, if only I could see it. Comments like yours and GP's help reassure me that there's not just some fundamental thing about Python that I'm missing. (And don't even get me started on Python's concurrency situation!)

Scarbutt 6y ago
Python is easy to get started with and has syntax that's nice to look at, easy/nice almost always wins over better. So now the issue is many have to keep using Python because of the ecosystem not because they find the language good.
- cutler 6y ago
  The top 3 programming languages - JS, Python & Java - are all pretty uninspiring. It's all about history and ecosystem unfortunately.
  - iLemming 6y ago
    > The top 3 programming languages - JS, Python & Java - are all pretty uninspiring. And Clojure beautifully solves many pain points of Java and Javascript, and even C#. I haven't tried clj-python mentioned, but I hope someday soon, running Clojure code interoperable with Python in production becomes a reality. The hosted nature of the language is a brilliant idea. Clojure eliminates many small annoyances I hate in other languages - syntactical, semantical, and operational. I wish more programmers have given a heartfelt try to Clojure instead of whining that "Lisp is unreadable" and "the parentheses are awful".
    - cutler 6y ago
      Agreed - Clojure is the best programming experience I've encountered. For a Pythonic lisp there's also Hy (https://github.com/hylang/hy https://github.com/hylang/hy).
  - fulafel 6y ago
    The "ecosystems" aren't so tied to languages anymore. There are lots of nice languages targeting JS, JVM and .NET that let you use libraries and framework made for those platforms.
andi999 6y ago
The appeal is the libraries, like numpy, scipy,matplotlib tensorflow, qiskit the quality and the ease to use them. Basically python became what TCL dreamt of becoming (ok, don't kill me).
- cutler 6y ago
  Clojure now has libpython: https://github.com/clj-python/libpython-clj https://github.com/clj-python/libpython-clj.
  - andi999 6y ago
    Better late than never. How is ease of use? Does it work well?
    - cutler 6y ago
      Works well. Best of both worlds.
  - Tcepsa 6y ago
    Oooo, neat! Thanks for pointing this out, I'll have to look into it. Many of my struggles have also revolved around the ecosystem (pulling in and/or keeping up to date with modules that other teams have written, etc.) so I'm especially interested to see how this deals with that.
    - cutler 6y ago
      There's also Hy (https://github.com/hylang/hy https://github.com/hylang/hy) if you just want Python with Clojure-ish syntax. At the very least it frees you from indentation and single-expression lambda restrictions.
      - andi999 6y ago
        What is the Syntax for named optional parameters
pjmlp 6y ago
Most of those libraries are written in C, C++ and Fortran. You can use them from any language with native FFI bindings capability.

by Tcepsa 6y ago

Scarbutt 6y ago

Python is easy to get started with and has syntax that's nice to look at, easy/nice almost always wins over better. So now the issue is many have to keep using Python because of the ecosystem not because they find the language good.

cutler 6y ago
The top 3 programming languages - JS, Python & Java - are all pretty uninspiring. It's all about history and ecosystem unfortunately.
- iLemming 6y ago
  > The top 3 programming languages - JS, Python & Java - are all pretty uninspiring. And Clojure beautifully solves many pain points of Java and Javascript, and even C#. I haven't tried clj-python mentioned, but I hope someday soon, running Clojure code interoperable with Python in production becomes a reality. The hosted nature of the language is a brilliant idea. Clojure eliminates many small annoyances I hate in other languages - syntactical, semantical, and operational. I wish more programmers have given a heartfelt try to Clojure instead of whining that "Lisp is unreadable" and "the parentheses are awful".
  - cutler 6y ago
    Agreed - Clojure is the best programming experience I've encountered. For a Pythonic lisp there's also Hy (https://github.com/hylang/hy https://github.com/hylang/hy).
- fulafel 6y ago
  The "ecosystems" aren't so tied to languages anymore. There are lots of nice languages targeting JS, JVM and .NET that let you use libraries and framework made for those platforms.

andi999 6y ago

The appeal is the libraries, like numpy, scipy,matplotlib tensorflow, qiskit the quality and the ease to use them. Basically python became what TCL dreamt of becoming (ok, don't kill me).

cutler 6y ago
Clojure now has libpython: https://github.com/clj-python/libpython-clj https://github.com/clj-python/libpython-clj.
- andi999 6y ago
  Better late than never. How is ease of use? Does it work well?
  - cutler 6y ago
    Works well. Best of both worlds.
- Tcepsa 6y ago
  Oooo, neat! Thanks for pointing this out, I'll have to look into it. Many of my struggles have also revolved around the ecosystem (pulling in and/or keeping up to date with modules that other teams have written, etc.) so I'm especially interested to see how this deals with that.
  - cutler 6y ago
    There's also Hy (https://github.com/hylang/hy https://github.com/hylang/hy) if you just want Python with Clojure-ish syntax. At the very least it frees you from indentation and single-expression lambda restrictions.
    - andi999 6y ago
      What is the Syntax for named optional parameters

pjmlp 6y ago

Most of those libraries are written in C, C++ and Fortran. You can use them from any language with native FFI bindings capability.