4 ms·

I’ll be that guy who says I love Python but it’s been shoved into too many spaces now. It’s been a great tool for me for writing things that require a lot of I/

by ok_dad 4y ago

I’ll be that guy who says I love Python but it’s been shoved into too many spaces now. It’s been a great tool for me for writing things that require a lot of I/O and aren’t CPU bound. I am even rethinking that now because I was able to write a program in Go with an HTTP API and using JSON as the usual API interchange format in one night (all stdlib too), and it was so easy that I plan to pitch using it for several services we need to rewrite at work that are currently in Python. That would be very similar to what I wrote in a day. If Python doesn’t fix their packaging, performance, and the massive expansion in the language, I think it’s going to start losing ground to other languages.

jeremycarter 4y ago
Syntactically Python is great. Runtime though, its not. Its fast to code in - that is all.
- jmt_ 4y ago
  Agreed. I'm past the "it's like writing pseudo-code - so cool!" honeymoon phase and onto the "some sort of static typing is actually pretty useful" as a developer.
  - aprdm 4y ago
    Good thing is that python3 provides typing.
    - peterashford 4y ago
      Optional type hints are not the same at all.
      - isitmadeofglass 4y ago
        No, its better. You can build the code first, test that it functions as expected, then add types, then compile it. This is miles ahead of having to struggle with getting types correct in C++ before you even have anything resembling a workable solution.
        jmt_ 4y ago
        I don't disagree but I wish Python had builtin support for runtime type checking. I've thought about switching to Go or Rust for certain projects but Python's rich ecosystem makes it hard for me to switch, so for now I long for runtime type checking without needing an external library (e.g typeguard).
        meadsteve 4y ago
        Very much agree. It's one thing I really appreciated about how php added type annotations. You didn't need them but once you added them they became a gaurantee.
        aprdm 4y ago
        You can configure vscode to fail on typing problems and it will show errors in your editor
        peterashford 4y ago
        So that's an IDE feature rather than a language level feature
        aprdm 4y ago
        Nope, that's a language level feature. Your code will also fail at runtime. The IDE is just turning it on.
        meadsteve 4y ago
        I don't think that's how it works. Unless you install a library like typeguard python doesn't do runtime type validation
        isitmadeofglass 4y ago
        You can check types at runtime in python. You can even check values at runtime. Heck you can check the weather at runtime if you like. What’s the problem exactly?
intelVISA 4y ago
Can't fault Py as a scripting lang but the lengths people go to kludge it into areas it shouldn't really be (in prod at least) is always a massive red flag for any org.
eru 4y ago
Microsoft is bankrolling some efforts to improve Python performance. They even hired Guido for that. (Disclosure: I'm a very minor volunteer contributor to that effort. I have a series of pull requests in the works that will improve runtime performance by about 1% across the board. I also have some more specialised improvements to memory.)

by ok_dad 4y ago

jeremycarter 4y ago

Syntactically Python is great. Runtime though, its not. Its fast to code in - that is all.

jmt_ 4y ago
Agreed. I'm past the "it's like writing pseudo-code - so cool!" honeymoon phase and onto the "some sort of static typing is actually pretty useful" as a developer.
- aprdm 4y ago
  Good thing is that python3 provides typing.
  - peterashford 4y ago
    Optional type hints are not the same at all.
    - isitmadeofglass 4y ago
      No, its better. You can build the code first, test that it functions as expected, then add types, then compile it. This is miles ahead of having to struggle with getting types correct in C++ before you even have anything resembling a workable solution.
      - jmt_ 4y ago
        I don't disagree but I wish Python had builtin support for runtime type checking. I've thought about switching to Go or Rust for certain projects but Python's rich ecosystem makes it hard for me to switch, so for now I long for runtime type checking without needing an external library (e.g typeguard).
        meadsteve 4y ago
        Very much agree. It's one thing I really appreciated about how php added type annotations. You didn't need them but once you added them they became a gaurantee.
        aprdm 4y ago
        You can configure vscode to fail on typing problems and it will show errors in your editor
        peterashford 4y ago
        So that's an IDE feature rather than a language level feature
        aprdm 4y ago
        Nope, that's a language level feature. Your code will also fail at runtime. The IDE is just turning it on.
        meadsteve 4y ago
        I don't think that's how it works. Unless you install a library like typeguard python doesn't do runtime type validation
        isitmadeofglass 4y ago
        You can check types at runtime in python. You can even check values at runtime. Heck you can check the weather at runtime if you like. What’s the problem exactly?

intelVISA 4y ago

Can't fault Py as a scripting lang but the lengths people go to kludge it into areas it shouldn't really be (in prod at least) is always a massive red flag for any org.

eru 4y ago

Microsoft is bankrolling some efforts to improve Python performance. They even hired Guido for that. (Disclosure: I'm a very minor volunteer contributor to that effort. I have a series of pull requests in the works that will improve runtime performance by about 1% across the board. I also have some more specialised improvements to memory.)