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- Huge ecosystem. - Common stuff (opening files, dealing with databases, string processing, math, regexps) is very easy. Sane defaults. - Works well with the

by qsort 4y ago

- Huge ecosystem. - Common stuff (opening files, dealing with databases, string processing, math, regexps) is very easy. Sane defaults. - Works well with the existing C ecosystem. It's not a "rewrite everything in X" language. - It's everywhere, most machines run Python just fine. - It doesn't treat Windows like a second-class citizen. - It doesn't force upon you a programming model that you might or might not care about. It's not a puzzle language where everything is a monad, or everything is a class, or everything is some weird widget. Write the damn code. - I'm personally not a fan of the language itself, but it's mostly a bog-standard algol if you don't poke it too much. It's relatively standard, people just get it even if Python isn't their main language. - Very personal point, but it's the only language I can edit with a plain text editor. Think nano, vi, Windows Notepad, that kind of thing. I don't know what to tell you, maybe it's my tiny monkey brain, but I can't do the same in Java or C++. Not that it's my preferred way to edit software, but I like having that option in a pinch. At least for what I do (developer, but with a data engineering/data science flavor) the overall architecture is usually the important thing, so admittedly some downsides might hit me less. I'd still rather write medium-to-large pieces of software (say 10,000+ LOC) in something else (Java, C#, C++, something boring like that), but it's pretty much unbeatable for small programs as far as I'm concerned.

fezfight 4y ago
To be fair, Microsofts citizen status is self inflicted. There was a time when they were actively hostile to programming languages not built in house. See, for example, Java. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extingu...
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Nah, it is only for UNIX folks that see UNIX everywhere, and start complaing when an OS isn't POSIX compatible. Even on those days there were always Java alternatives to chose from, J++ wasn't required.
  - fezfight 4y ago
    I mean, you can say 'nah' all you'd like, but there's a whole section in that link on their hostility to Java. Including choice anti-competitive gates quotes! Can't say I'd blame any language dev who saw that, and said 'no thanks'.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      That did not change the fact that Java worked perfectly alright on Windows, the same cannot be said for many FOSS languages that insist all OSes are UNIX clones.
      - fezfight 4y ago
        Quality chefs don't work for McDonald's, either. :D
        pjmlp 4y ago
        Depends on how quality is measured...
        bornfreddy 4y ago
        Off topic, but I wonder if that's true? Their research division must be pretty well funded and they sure care about taste, though the limits (cost) are pretty big. Anyone know more about this?
bb88 4y ago
> It doesn't force upon you a programming model that you might or might not care about. It's not a puzzle language where everything is a monad, or everything is a class, or everything is some weird widget. Write the damn code. Yeah, I second this. There is some foot guns you'll hit in python, but the amount of foot guns I've hit in C++ and golang are 10x that of python. The other thing is that over time, the python devs actually strive to make development easier, and they try to resolve foot guns where they can. In golang, e.g., Rob Pike is very opinionated about how software should be written, and it's carried forward in the language. Python on the other hand, recommends people be "pythonic", but only encourages it, and doesn't enforce it upon the user. > I'd still rather write medium-to-large pieces of software (say 10,000+ LOC) in something else (Java, C#, C++, something boring like that), but it's pretty much unbeatable for small programs as far as I'm concerned. What I've learned is the python requires unit tests, as does golang, or basically any language that can throw a null pointer err. If you write your code modularly and have good unit tests around your code, it works amazingly well. I've been a part of good and bad large python projects. The best ones have really good unit tests around their code.

by qsort 4y ago

fezfight 4y ago

To be fair, Microsofts citizen status is self inflicted. There was a time when they were actively hostile to programming languages not built in house. See, for example, Java. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extingu...

pjmlp 4y ago
Nah, it is only for UNIX folks that see UNIX everywhere, and start complaing when an OS isn't POSIX compatible. Even on those days there were always Java alternatives to chose from, J++ wasn't required.
- fezfight 4y ago
  I mean, you can say 'nah' all you'd like, but there's a whole section in that link on their hostility to Java. Including choice anti-competitive gates quotes! Can't say I'd blame any language dev who saw that, and said 'no thanks'.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    That did not change the fact that Java worked perfectly alright on Windows, the same cannot be said for many FOSS languages that insist all OSes are UNIX clones.
    - fezfight 4y ago
      Quality chefs don't work for McDonald's, either. :D
      - pjmlp 4y ago
        Depends on how quality is measured...
      - bornfreddy 4y ago
        Off topic, but I wonder if that's true? Their research division must be pretty well funded and they sure care about taste, though the limits (cost) are pretty big. Anyone know more about this?

bb88 4y ago

> It doesn't force upon you a programming model that you might or might not care about. It's not a puzzle language where everything is a monad, or everything is a class, or everything is some weird widget. Write the damn code. Yeah, I second this. There is some foot guns you'll hit in python, but the amount of foot guns I've hit in C++ and golang are 10x that of python. The other thing is that over time, the python devs actually strive to make development easier, and they try to resolve foot guns where they can. In golang, e.g., Rob Pike is very opinionated about how software should be written, and it's carried forward in the language. Python on the other hand, recommends people be "pythonic", but only encourages it, and doesn't enforce it upon the user. > I'd still rather write medium-to-large pieces of software (say 10,000+ LOC) in something else (Java, C#, C++, something boring like that), but it's pretty much unbeatable for small programs as far as I'm concerned. What I've learned is the python requires unit tests, as does golang, or basically any language that can throw a null pointer err. If you write your code modularly and have good unit tests around your code, it works amazingly well. I've been a part of good and bad large python projects. The best ones have really good unit tests around their code.