5 ms·

> Also screw all Python programmers, what a bunch of losers with their indenting rules and PEPs. Weirdos. Whenever you hear somone say Python is good or interes

> Also screw all Python programmers, what a bunch of losers with their indenting rules and PEPs. Weirdos. Whenever you hear somone say Python is good or interesting, run. Amen. This is my credo. I had to program Python in my last job and I ran as fast as I could from that world of artificial limitation, and landed squarely in the land of camels and onions: The Promised Land.

pkrumins 5y ago
We should team up!
- HeckFeck 5y ago
  Certainly, brother. Together we shall bring the Word of Wall to all. I see a world where /usr/bin/perl will become PID1 and at every system boot will mv /usr/bin/python /dev/null there shall the snake finally be consigned eternally.
  - zerocount 5y ago
    While you're at it, get rid of all the Rust, C++, and TypeScript as well. Let the world C the light.
    - pkrumins 5y ago
      Team Perl represent.
    - ruslan 5y ago
      C++ as of '98 is ok. The rest is garbage.
7thaccount 5y ago
I've written a bit of Perl and have read quite a few Perl books (I legit probably own 10+), but generally prefer Python. I can't understand how someone open minded enough to be cool with Perl and it's strangeness, would be upset by something as trivial as whitespace. It obviously isn't that much of a problem as it's one of the most popular languages ever and used in so many domains with users ranging from children to Google's chief scientist and with it being a critical backbone of many companies and the defacto language to build an API for. It's fine to find it aesthetically displeasing if that is what you want.
- heresie-dabord 5y ago
  If I may engage you in discussion, friend... > I can't understand how someone open minded enough to be cool with Perl and it's [sic] strangeness, would be upset by something as trivial as whitespace. Thank you for the compliment of open-mindedness. Every language is strange to some degree until one becomes proficient. Notice your own grammatical error above. English too is strange until one masters it. But we won't blame people for making mistakes because bad code can be written in any language. Whitespace is not trivial in Python. It has been promoted to logical operator. Now everything that I type gets broken unless I use an editor to protect me. Oh, you might say, any modern editor should be capable! This leads to IDE dependence like Eclipse and PyCharm (both written in... Java). There is none of this nonsense with Perl. I work on systems of every size with the simplest, most robust set of tools. I don't need a complex baseline just to write my code. > It obviously isn't that much of a problem as it's one of the most popular languages ever and used [...] from children to Google's chief scientist [..] critical backbone of many companies [..] defacto language to build an API for. C, C++, Java, Javascript and Bash are also very popular languages. The first three are more important that Python. And they are all unlike Python. Google has formally sponsored Python for some time, which certainly helps Python. Google has also been developing Go, which is itself a better language than Python in many ways. And Go solves the problem of formatting for readability in a sane way (go fmt). An API can be expressed in many ways. > It's fine to find it aesthetically displeasing The above criticisms are objective. However, I don't like how many lines idiomatic Python requires because of the whitespace promotion. At its best, Python allows clear, compact expressions such as lambdas. At worst, Python is needlessly puffed with emptiness. Perl is as compact as the coder wishes it to be. It is easy to run perltidy and colourise the output for a formatted view if one prefers.
  - 7thaccount 5y ago
    With perl you have to add all sorts of junk like "use strict;" and "use warnings;". There is no REPL to incrementally test small snippets. You have to remember all kinds of things such as context for sigils. I still don't have a problem with the language, it's just different. I don't think anyone would compare Python to C or Java. C is good for microcontrollers and drivers (that sort of thing), while Java is good for large enterprise systems. Python on the other hand is an excellent scripting language. Much more popular than perl by the numbers where nearly all scripting, data science (well, R too), and ML is used. Every application I've seen in the last decade has had a Python API, but none use a Perl. I've literally never heard of a Python developer switching to Perl, but I've lost count of the number of folks switching to Python from Perl over the years (HN threads). Simply speaking, the numbers show that the faults of Python (there are many) are still less than those of Perl (also many). As far as whitespace goes, it means it's easy for all Python coders to read each other's code once you adjust for a spacing difference. No need to run something like "perltidy". I've never once needed a fancy editor like eclipse. I've used the little Tk editor IDLE, Spyder, just notepad ++, and Vim + Command Line just fine over the past decade, just like how I've used Perl. All in all, they're both great languages with several warts. Google isn't replacing Python with Go. Their uses are very different. Obviously Go makes for a more performant backend, but requires significantly more code, so there is a trade off. I would bet that Python and Perl have a pretty similar amount of semantic density (or whatever it is called). Saying it is puffy nothingness makes little sense. Just something like iterating through a file is pretty much the same in both languages. The use of lambdas was discouraged by Python's creator as it means more stuff for developers to learn and keep in their head. Larry Wall's TIMTOWDI means that the developer gets more power, but there are 10 different ways to do something and a lot of folks REALLY don't like that as it makes maintenance and learning more challenging.

pkrumins 5y ago

We should team up!

HeckFeck 5y ago
Certainly, brother. Together we shall bring the Word of Wall to all. I see a world where /usr/bin/perl will become PID1 and at every system boot will mv /usr/bin/python /dev/null there shall the snake finally be consigned eternally.
- zerocount 5y ago
  While you're at it, get rid of all the Rust, C++, and TypeScript as well. Let the world C the light.
  - pkrumins 5y ago
    Team Perl represent.
  - ruslan 5y ago
    C++ as of '98 is ok. The rest is garbage.

7thaccount 5y ago

I've written a bit of Perl and have read quite a few Perl books (I legit probably own 10+), but generally prefer Python. I can't understand how someone open minded enough to be cool with Perl and it's strangeness, would be upset by something as trivial as whitespace. It obviously isn't that much of a problem as it's one of the most popular languages ever and used in so many domains with users ranging from children to Google's chief scientist and with it being a critical backbone of many companies and the defacto language to build an API for. It's fine to find it aesthetically displeasing if that is what you want.

heresie-dabord 5y ago
If I may engage you in discussion, friend... > I can't understand how someone open minded enough to be cool with Perl and it's [sic] strangeness, would be upset by something as trivial as whitespace. Thank you for the compliment of open-mindedness. Every language is strange to some degree until one becomes proficient. Notice your own grammatical error above. English too is strange until one masters it. But we won't blame people for making mistakes because bad code can be written in any language. Whitespace is not trivial in Python. It has been promoted to logical operator. Now everything that I type gets broken unless I use an editor to protect me. Oh, you might say, any modern editor should be capable! This leads to IDE dependence like Eclipse and PyCharm (both written in... Java). There is none of this nonsense with Perl. I work on systems of every size with the simplest, most robust set of tools. I don't need a complex baseline just to write my code. > It obviously isn't that much of a problem as it's one of the most popular languages ever and used [...] from children to Google's chief scientist [..] critical backbone of many companies [..] defacto language to build an API for. C, C++, Java, Javascript and Bash are also very popular languages. The first three are more important that Python. And they are all unlike Python. Google has formally sponsored Python for some time, which certainly helps Python. Google has also been developing Go, which is itself a better language than Python in many ways. And Go solves the problem of formatting for readability in a sane way (go fmt). An API can be expressed in many ways. > It's fine to find it aesthetically displeasing The above criticisms are objective. However, I don't like how many lines idiomatic Python requires because of the whitespace promotion. At its best, Python allows clear, compact expressions such as lambdas. At worst, Python is needlessly puffed with emptiness. Perl is as compact as the coder wishes it to be. It is easy to run perltidy and colourise the output for a formatted view if one prefers.
- 7thaccount 5y ago
  With perl you have to add all sorts of junk like "use strict;" and "use warnings;". There is no REPL to incrementally test small snippets. You have to remember all kinds of things such as context for sigils. I still don't have a problem with the language, it's just different. I don't think anyone would compare Python to C or Java. C is good for microcontrollers and drivers (that sort of thing), while Java is good for large enterprise systems. Python on the other hand is an excellent scripting language. Much more popular than perl by the numbers where nearly all scripting, data science (well, R too), and ML is used. Every application I've seen in the last decade has had a Python API, but none use a Perl. I've literally never heard of a Python developer switching to Perl, but I've lost count of the number of folks switching to Python from Perl over the years (HN threads). Simply speaking, the numbers show that the faults of Python (there are many) are still less than those of Perl (also many). As far as whitespace goes, it means it's easy for all Python coders to read each other's code once you adjust for a spacing difference. No need to run something like "perltidy". I've never once needed a fancy editor like eclipse. I've used the little Tk editor IDLE, Spyder, just notepad ++, and Vim + Command Line just fine over the past decade, just like how I've used Perl. All in all, they're both great languages with several warts. Google isn't replacing Python with Go. Their uses are very different. Obviously Go makes for a more performant backend, but requires significantly more code, so there is a trade off. I would bet that Python and Perl have a pretty similar amount of semantic density (or whatever it is called). Saying it is puffy nothingness makes little sense. Just something like iterating through a file is pretty much the same in both languages. The use of lambdas was discouraged by Python's creator as it means more stuff for developers to learn and keep in their head. Larry Wall's TIMTOWDI means that the developer gets more power, but there are 10 different ways to do something and a lot of folks REALLY don't like that as it makes maintenance and learning more challenging.