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What made python beat out Ruby? There was one way to do things. It was simple, and it worked. Then python 3 wanted to become JavaScript. Async, Unicode, float
by bjt2n3904 5y ago
What made python beat out Ruby?
There was one way to do things. It was simple, and it worked.
Then python 3 wanted to become JavaScript. Async, Unicode, floating point division. Move fast and break things. No one way to do things, it's however you want!
I had to explain python deployments to a novice the other day. What a nightmare.
Python 3.5 to 3.8 just kept drastically changing things. My first experience wasn't pleasant, and for the first time I needed virtual environments and custom apt repositories to install multiple versions of python.
But it finally seems things have settled a bit. Here's hoping the Python cultural revolution settles down, and stops trying to be a trendy language, and instead a dependable one.
- _joel 5y agoI normally use https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv when I need to test multiple versions.
- joeberon 5y agoI don't see how any of that is relevant to the article, but the reason python beat out ruby was almost entirely due to ruby being really really slow.
- samhw 5y ago> the reason python beat out ruby was almost entirely due to ruby being really really slow Relative to Python, that language which notoriously makes C look like a sloth on training wheels...
- joeberon 5y agoPython is much faster than MRI Ruby used to be back in the day
- elcomet 5y agoSo you might imagine what ruby felt like ...
- spicybright 5y agoIt's just an opinion, but in exchange for the speed hit you get a huge decent standard library, and lots of high quality libraries that you can stitch together much more easily than in C. In the vast majority of my use cases, I'll take the half second load hit in exchange for that (if it's even that long).
- samhw 5y agoYeah, it's totally dependent on what you're doing. It would be insane to write a simple script in C, and it would be insane to write an operating system in Python. Most code lies somewhere between those two extremes. I fully admit that the cult of performance is silly - and anyway, it can sometimes be easier to write performant code in a slightly more high-level language that you're extremely adept at writing. For instance, I'd wager most people could write a more performant web server in Go than they could in C, even if they could write a web server in C.