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For comparison, Python 1.0 was released in 1994. 7 years later in 2001, Python 2.2 was released. I don't think many of today's popular Python packages date back

For comparison, Python 1.0 was released in 1994. 7 years later in 2001, Python 2.2 was released. I don't think many of today's popular Python packages date back that far.

lelanthran 4y ago
> For comparison, Python 1.0 was released in 1994. 7 years later in 2001, Python 2.2 was released. I don't think many of today's popular Python packages date back that far. Python is an outlier though; it was mostly ignored until very suddenly it took off starting around the time Jupyter released. Most (including I) think it took off due to how easy and accessible it was back then, syntax-wise. You could pick it up and be slightly productive in a day, be extremely productive in a week and essentially master it in a month. Go is following a similar trajectory: productive contributor in a week, master in a month. Rust is in the opposite direction: too many people simply give up on it, those that persevere report months before any reasonable productivity.
- Macha 4y ago
  Before it's adoption with the scientific community, Python still had a place as "Better perl for scripting" and "Dynamic language for webapps if you don't like Ruby". e.g. Reddit, YouTube and Eve Online are notable apps written in Python before scientific Python was a thing. Reddit and Eve are interesting in being largely stuck with the now-dead platforms they built on too, in the form of web.py and Stackless Python. YouTube I presume the original Python application is gone in favour of a bunch of Go and Java microservices by now. It's interesting as someone who was in the Python for web development camp as Python for scientific computing took off as the two camps were both oblivious to the existence of the other in many cases.
  - DeathArrow 4y ago
    >"Dynamic language for webapps if you don't like Ruby" Wasn't PHP the king of dynamic laguages for Web?
    - Macha 4y ago
      PHP was an earlier era, and certainly continued (to this day even) to be used, but I was thinking more of the Rails era than PHP's peak, which came earlier.
      - lelanthran 4y ago
        > PHP was an earlier era, and certainly continued (to this day even) to be used, but I was thinking more of the Rails era than PHP's peak, which came earlier. I don't think Rails/Ruby was ever used more than PHP. IIRC, PHP at its lowest popularity ever is still higher than Rails/Ruby at it's highest popularity ever. The lowest I can recall PHP being at is +-6% (recently). The highest that Rails/Ruby ever got to was <3% (2004/2005/2006).
        DeathArrow 4y ago
        PHP is still used. I don't know if many new apps are written in PHP, or it is used to maintain the large pool of existing PHP apps, but according to Tiobe, Redmonk, PyPl PHP is still widely used.
  - jsjohnst 4y ago
    This is some extreme revisionist history here. The scientific Python community and many of the libraries around it go back way before Reddit, YouTube, etc.
    - Macha 4y ago
      Some dates from Wikipedia: Major scientific libraries: - SciPy: "Around 2001" - ipython: 2001 - Matplotlib: 2003 - NumPy: 2006 - Pandas: 2008 Major web libraries: - Zope: 1999 - Twisted Web: 2002 - WSGI: 2003 - Django: 2005 - Pylons: 2005 Applications mentioned: - Eve Online: 2003 - YouTube: 2005 - Reddit: 2005 I don't think this justifies the claim that the web python community was around at the same time as the scientific community while the two were relatively unaware of each of other as "revisionist". It just makes it look like you were in the camp that was aware of the scientific stack and not the web stack.
      - jsjohnst 4y ago
        > web python community was around at the same time as the scientific community while the two were relatively unaware of each of other I didn’t dispute this, please reread what I said again. > It just makes it look like you were in the camp that was aware of the scientific stack and not the web stack. No, actually I’m a web stack Python guy mainly, I just actually know my history.

For comparison, Python 1.0 was released in 1994. 7 years later in 2001, Python 2.2 was released. I don't think many of today's popular Python packages date back that far.

lelanthran 4y ago

> For comparison, Python 1.0 was released in 1994. 7 years later in 2001, Python 2.2 was released. I don't think many of today's popular Python packages date back that far. Python is an outlier though; it was mostly ignored until very suddenly it took off starting around the time Jupyter released. Most (including I) think it took off due to how easy and accessible it was back then, syntax-wise. You could pick it up and be slightly productive in a day, be extremely productive in a week and essentially master it in a month. Go is following a similar trajectory: productive contributor in a week, master in a month. Rust is in the opposite direction: too many people simply give up on it, those that persevere report months before any reasonable productivity.

Macha 4y ago
Before it's adoption with the scientific community, Python still had a place as "Better perl for scripting" and "Dynamic language for webapps if you don't like Ruby". e.g. Reddit, YouTube and Eve Online are notable apps written in Python before scientific Python was a thing. Reddit and Eve are interesting in being largely stuck with the now-dead platforms they built on too, in the form of web.py and Stackless Python. YouTube I presume the original Python application is gone in favour of a bunch of Go and Java microservices by now. It's interesting as someone who was in the Python for web development camp as Python for scientific computing took off as the two camps were both oblivious to the existence of the other in many cases.
- DeathArrow 4y ago
  >"Dynamic language for webapps if you don't like Ruby" Wasn't PHP the king of dynamic laguages for Web?
  - Macha 4y ago
    PHP was an earlier era, and certainly continued (to this day even) to be used, but I was thinking more of the Rails era than PHP's peak, which came earlier.
    - lelanthran 4y ago
      > PHP was an earlier era, and certainly continued (to this day even) to be used, but I was thinking more of the Rails era than PHP's peak, which came earlier. I don't think Rails/Ruby was ever used more than PHP. IIRC, PHP at its lowest popularity ever is still higher than Rails/Ruby at it's highest popularity ever. The lowest I can recall PHP being at is +-6% (recently). The highest that Rails/Ruby ever got to was <3% (2004/2005/2006).
      - DeathArrow 4y ago
        PHP is still used. I don't know if many new apps are written in PHP, or it is used to maintain the large pool of existing PHP apps, but according to Tiobe, Redmonk, PyPl PHP is still widely used.
- jsjohnst 4y ago
  This is some extreme revisionist history here. The scientific Python community and many of the libraries around it go back way before Reddit, YouTube, etc.
  - Macha 4y ago
    Some dates from Wikipedia: Major scientific libraries: - SciPy: "Around 2001" - ipython: 2001 - Matplotlib: 2003 - NumPy: 2006 - Pandas: 2008 Major web libraries: - Zope: 1999 - Twisted Web: 2002 - WSGI: 2003 - Django: 2005 - Pylons: 2005 Applications mentioned: - Eve Online: 2003 - YouTube: 2005 - Reddit: 2005 I don't think this justifies the claim that the web python community was around at the same time as the scientific community while the two were relatively unaware of each of other as "revisionist". It just makes it look like you were in the camp that was aware of the scientific stack and not the web stack.
    - jsjohnst 4y ago
      > web python community was around at the same time as the scientific community while the two were relatively unaware of each of other I didn’t dispute this, please reread what I said again. > It just makes it look like you were in the camp that was aware of the scientific stack and not the web stack. No, actually I’m a web stack Python guy mainly, I just actually know my history.