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Python is now Blub! Run!
- rglullis 18y agoFalse premise. Google chose Python as the first language for GAE because it would be the most appealing language among the programming languages already used at Google. It has nothing to do with "being a language widely used and understood by the masses". Javascript/Rhino would be also a cool choice, but I think that is what Steve Yegge is working on.
- pdubroy 18y agoOh no, the [programming language I favour | band I like] is now mainstream. Well, I [use the more obscure features | prefer their older albums]. I [am a much better coder | have way better taste] than those other people anyways.
- IsaacSchlueter 18y agoI liked [band I like | programming language I favor | dinosaurs] when they were still underground. http://xkcd.com/460/ http://xkcd.com/460/
- utx00 18y agocould lisp be blub for something else? if yes, what is that something. if you think not, why not?
- rplevy 18y agoI think (today's) Lisp could be blub, but only if Lisps were to become the standard category of programming languages. Then some other more advanced meta-lisp that is a few layers of abstraction up, and applying some yet-undiscovered principles of computer science in its high-level semantics would be at the cutting edge, and the vanilla lisps would be mundane and practical-seeming.
- olavk 18y agoFor some some Lisp-developers Lisp is blub relative to Haskell.
- utx00 18y agohow come? could you give an example?
- olavk 18y agoI've met Lisp-programmers which simple didn't understand the point of Haskell - all those arbitrary constraints (no IO, no mutation) which just required elaborate workaround (monads) to get back to square one. This makes Lisp "blub" (for them).
- inklesspen 18y agoX is blub if there is a language which is more powerful than X and you can't understand that the "extra stuff" in that language is actually power, as opposed to meaningless stuff. For example, an argument could be made that Lisp is a blub, because of the libraries problem. I'm not a lisp user myself, though I'm learning Scheme, so I don't know for sure if the libraries problem is an actual problem. But if it is, you could say that Lisp is a blub for Python, because while Lisp users are spending their time inventing a DSL that's incompatible with everything else, Python users type 'import awesomelibrary' and get the job done. So, really, it depends on your notion of power. In pg's original Blub essay, power is Lisp-y-ness (or macros, perhaps), so by definition Lisp can't be a blub. But if your notion of power is something else, maybe it can be.
- emmett 18y agoSpecifically, the Blub idea applies to language power. You could build python's libraries in Lisp, but you can't build a macro in Python without changing the language. On the other hand, Lisp isn't at the top of the theoretical Blub hierarchy. Users of erlang can to some degree look at lisp as a Blub - what do you mean there's no lightweight concurrency, and you can't start millions of threads and have the messaging just managed? Lisp is broken! A language with Lisp's (lack of) syntax and erlang's concurrency might be able to look down on both.
- inklesspen 18y ago"You could build python's libraries in Lisp" Then why doesn't someone do so?
- emmett 18y agoJust because one could do something, doesn't mean one will do something. I'm not arguing you should use Lisp over Python, merely that the strength of libraries is not a language feature per se. Clearly, it's one of the most important things to consider when picking a language, but it's not a feature of that language any more than how helpful the people in that language's IRC chat room is, or how good the documentation.
- tptacek 18y ago"Because if you want to do a startup, you should have some reason to believe that you are several times more productive than the average programmer, an order of magnitude even." Uhh... what? Who said that?
- mrtron 18y agoI would hope my organization was several times more productive per employee of an average company. I wouldn't put all my faith in it being the direct result of a specific programming language.
- tesseract 18y agoThat sounds to me like a (poor) paraphrase of part of the Blub essay (http://paulgraham.com/avg.html http://paulgraham.com/avg.html).
- stcredzero 18y agoThere's a lot more to programmer productivity than language. There are a lot of organizational factors. The programmer's aptitude is probably the biggest factor, and in the case of the most talented coders, probably swamps the choice of language by a large factor. Being several times more productive is not going to benefit you so much if you are working on the wrong things. Also, there is a lot of really bad code and really bad practices out there in different niches. There are still plenty of places where you can bring in test driven development and a language like Python and kick ass. In fact, I bet some of those niches will even have competitors who are backwards Python coders ripe for takedown.
- mtts 18y agoIf it were true, Guido at least would be happy (how much more "blub" can you get than "programming for everyone"?) Unfortunately, it isn't true at all. As it stands, no one but hardcore web app enthousiasts use Google Apps. That hardly makes it mainstream, I should think.
- stcredzero 18y agoIs OOP a Blub-level paradigm now? I suspect that it has been for awhile now.
- globalrev 18y agoI didn't understand if the article is ironic or not.
- Hexstream 18y ago"This doesn't mean that I'm going to start programming exclusively in Lisp from now on—the libraries just aren't there." What libraries does he need that "just aren't there"?
- MoeDrippins 18y agoPython became blub the second the "one true way to do it" mantra was conceived.
- olavk 18y agoBlubbiness is not a property of the language per se. Is it the phenomenon that you don't recognize if an unfamiliar language is more powerful than the currently most powerful language you know. The more powerful languages just seem bizarre are annoying. But you immediately recognize when a language is less powerful than one you know. Therefore many developers think they are using the most powerful language in the world ("Blub"). So if Python is the most powerful language you know and you don't understand the power of eg. Lisp macros or the Haskell type system, then Python is Blub for you. If Lisp is you favorite language and you don't understand the power of the Python readability, the concept of "one obvious way" and so on, then Lisp is Blub for you.
- utx00 18y agothe assumption is that languages vary in power, and furthermore that lisp sits pretty high on this power ladder. let us assume further that lisp is more powerful than python (i think that's safe. in this forum anyways). so to say that python readability makes lisp blub sort of implies python is blub to you. unless, of course, you think python is more powerful than lisp. my question is, what leads people to believe lisp is so high up on the language power scale? ps: incidentally, macros are all about readability. if you took all the macros out of your program and substituted them by their macro expansion (by copying and pasting) you would end up with exactly the same program. exactly. it would just be less readable ;)
- stcredzero 18y agoYes, but good coding and powerful languages are all about readability. You could write everything in assembly, after all.
- eru 18y agoYou would get the same phenotype. But far from the same genotype. So measured by what the programs do - they are the same. Measured by how well you can evolve the program, the not-expanded version will probably fare better.
- paul 18y agoEven worse, he's writing blog posts in English! (the same language used by millions of semi-literate people)
- gills 18y ago"millions." "semi-literate." haha...you made my day.
- kajecounterhack 18y agoThere are more people learning English in china than we have English speakers here in the US. Maybe thats why, haha.
- utx00 18y agonow. now.
- pavelludiq 18y agoWhat about Bluby..err Ruby? :D well, if i look on the situation more seriously, python is more popular than ruby, and ruby has some features that make it a tiny bit more powerful in some situations so if the author if such an underground freak, he can use ruby for a few months until it becomes Bluby too.
- cstejerean 18y agoPython more popular than Ruby? To me it always seemed that Ruby and Rails are more popular.
- BrandonM 18y agoI would say that RoR is more popular than, say, Django, but that Python the language is more popular than Ruby the language.
- pavelludiq 18y agoYeah, thats what i meant. Do you use ruby for scripting blender or anything else other that RoR? Do you use it for scientific computation? Do people use it for shell scripts and small games, or GUI apps?You can do that with ruby, but for me, people learn ruby because rails is popular, python doesn't have that one big killer app, people learn python because its generally fun and useful for many stuff.
- stcredzero 18y agoI think this is a great indicator of whether a language is a success: Do people learn it because its generally fun and useful? (Versus, do people learn it because of corporate PR, or because it's the accepted/official way to do [X])
- parbo 18y agoYou can't say that a language is Blub. It becomes Blub only if the programmer using the language fails to realize that there are more powerful languages. It has nothing to do with mainstream or not.
- maxklein 18y agoWait a minute. How did he come to this realisation? Did he just suddenly INVENT it? Did he just MAKE UP that graph? Because to me, it sure seems that way. He does not backup his assertion that python is now in the middle of the programmer world.