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I wonder now that python made it to the big league, so to speak, if there shouldn't be more high level review of what exactly it should aim to be as an language

I wonder now that python made it to the big league, so to speak, if there shouldn't be more high level review of what exactly it should aim to be as an language and ecosystem going forward. Is the speed optimisation problem even well defined otherwise? E.g. tackling performant numerical computations via numpy and other such libraries seems to be a workable pattern. Even with compiled languages like C/C++ and fortran these types of computations are best handled with tuned libraries. For other uses, e.g., API's fastapi/starlette claims to be as fast as go / javascript. Not to say that there isnt a performance issue, but who exactly is experiencing it as a generic issue? E.g., I know for a fact that some python based desktop GUI applications have performance issues (...) but it could be the implementation and in any case GUI use is a bit of a niche (and python on mobile which is the dominant user device these days is very very niche).

at_a_remove 5y ago
I agree, it needed everyone to step back and make choices as to direction. Instead, we got the "stone soup" where everyone wanted their favorite feature from some other language added in. You'll see this in most languages, where people want something from another language they are more comfortable with. Privately, I refer to this as the California problem: people move away from California (or anywhere else really, I am picking on California) but then bring all of the baggage and voting habits that made California unpalatable to them eventually. Python is especially vulnerable to this because it conflicts with "There should be one -– and preferably only one –- obvious way to do it." The more features added to the language, the more ways there are to do something, and we then must invent new idioms and lean on "convention."
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
It does a lot of basic things right: - iterators everywhere - context managers - generators - namespaces - powerful function arguments - a good stdlib - unicode handling - string formatting It's easy to get started, and then to get going. Turns out a lot of people value that.

at_a_remove 5y ago

I agree, it needed everyone to step back and make choices as to direction. Instead, we got the "stone soup" where everyone wanted their favorite feature from some other language added in. You'll see this in most languages, where people want something from another language they are more comfortable with. Privately, I refer to this as the California problem: people move away from California (or anywhere else really, I am picking on California) but then bring all of the baggage and voting habits that made California unpalatable to them eventually. Python is especially vulnerable to this because it conflicts with "There should be one -– and preferably only one –- obvious way to do it." The more features added to the language, the more ways there are to do something, and we then must invent new idioms and lean on "convention."

BiteCode_dev 5y ago

It does a lot of basic things right: - iterators everywhere - context managers - generators - namespaces - powerful function arguments - a good stdlib - unicode handling - string formatting It's easy to get started, and then to get going. Turns out a lot of people value that.