4 ms·

The irony of this comment, given that there is precisely nothing about Python itself as a language that makes it particularly suitable for "anything remotely sc

The irony of this comment, given that there is precisely nothing about Python itself as a language that makes it particularly suitable for "anything remotely scientific", is thick enough to spread on toast. I can see the validity of such an argument for languages like R or Matlab or Julia (EDIT: or Fortran), wherein the languages were designed with scientific use cases in mind. Python is not in that category; it's rather in the category of Perl (EDIT: and not Fortran): languages that happened to be useful to scientists by happenstance, and around which a library ecosystem developed in support of that usefulness. No fundamental reason why Javascript would somehow be ineligible if Python is eligible.

adenozine 4y ago
I can see based on your perspective that you haven't collaborated with hundreds of STEM professionals, postdocs, or researchers. I can also see that your comment fails to address the meat of mine, despite being a reply to it. Python is extremely easy to get tasks done with, there's a minimal amount of ceremony and PLT background knowledge needed to program it. I love Perl, but explaining how $ and @ work differently given the point of usage is annoying, and if I taught Perl all day every day, it'd be a continuous annoyance. I don't have the studies and data to back up my opinion, but a lifetime of work has taught me the certainty that Python is one of the greatest languages ever created, that quite literally ANYBODY who can type and read English can learn to become effective with it, and that it blows every competitor out of the water by a large margin with regards to getting from Point A to Point B as a novice programmer. As more of the world becomes programmers, that facet alone cements Python's continued success and its place in PLT history. It's the human part of the language, not the object system or type theory or compiler internals or any of the esoteric technical bits. Nobody can teach someone to program in anything other than Python quicker than I could teach them to program in Python. But anyhow, this is well below my time to spend in a discussion like this. I mean this in the nicest way possible: I've probably spent more time teaching and training people who weren't programmers to write good programs then you've spent programming throughout your life. People who work in the White House, DARPA, the FDA, DOT, IRS, you name it. I know I can't PROVE my position, but time will. Python will always win eventually.
- rykuno 4y ago
  Honestly though, the original comment was just a plea for more competition to drive innovation it seems. Most of the data scientists I've worked with are programmer hobbyists as well. We've used Javascript/Python/Go/R. Maybe this will exist for people in that demographic, those who are data scientists that already are solid in programming. Regardless, more cool toys are good.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  > I can see based on your perspective that you haven't collaborated with hundreds of STEM professionals, postdocs, or researchers. Surely you know the saying about what happens when you ass-u-me. But hey, if that's the tone you'd like to set, then I'm happy to oblige... > I can also see that your comment fails to address the meat of mine There was no meat to yours. "Python is good for scientific uses because reasons and JS is not because reasons; also, here are some cheap shots at JS being a weekend project despite there having been literal decades of work since Brendan Eich invented it". That's the sort of drivel I'd expect from novices using tribalism as a substitute for an informed opinion, not someone who claims to have sufficient expertise in programming to competently educate someone else. > I love Perl, but explaining how $ and @ work differently given the point of usage is annoying, and if I taught Perl all day every day, it'd be a continuous annoyance. Explaining to beginners why their programs break if they don't get indentation perfectly right strikes me as no less of a continuous annoyance. On that note, Ruby lacks either of those issues. Same with Lua. Same with Javascript. > ANYBODY who can type and read English can learn to become effective with it That's true of pretty much every scripting language out there; that's indeed what usually sets scripting languages apart from systems languages. > it blows every competitor out of the water by a large margin with regards to getting from Point A to Point B as a novice programmer Not every competitor. It's one of a category of languages which novices in significant numbers successfully learn reasonably quickly - and significant numbers of novices do become successful with Ruby or Lua or - yes - JS just as quickly as novices do with Python. > I mean this in the nicest way possible: I've probably spent more time teaching and training people who weren't programmers to write good programs then you've spent programming throughout your life. I mean this in the nicest way possible: if your comments here are representative of your teaching and training of others, then you owe your students refunds and apologies. I would hope that you don't teach your students blatant misinformation like JS being merely a weekend project (as if Python wasn't?) or fanboyishly insist that "Python will always win eventually" as if programming is all about winners and losers rather than using the right tool for the job. If you do teach your students such, then they are worse off for it, and deserve someone who actually educates rather than misinforms. If you're as good a teacher as you claim to be, then the language doesn't matter; the differences between the various scripting languages out there are minute in comparison to the fundamental concepts like "how do I write and call functions?" or "how do I store data and use it later?". Likewise, to your average non-programmer, the language doesn't matter. What matters is the path of least resistance between "I need to do this thing" and "I have done this thing". Sometimes that's Python. Sometimes that's JS. Hell, sometimes that's something totally bonkers like Haskell. Python is one of several paths of least resistance for scientists in particular not because of anything to do with the language itself, but rather because of a library and tooling ecosystem that formed around it by happenstance; no reason why that couldn't happen for JS, or any other scripting language.
hermitcrab 4y ago
>it's rather in the category of Perl or Fortran: languages that happened to be useful to scientists by happenstance From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran : "Fortran was originally developed by IBM in the 1950s for scientific and engineering applications"
- yellowapple 4y ago
  Fair enough; edited, and thanks for the correction.
jitl 4y ago
JavaScript has a very weak standard library. The language & standard library lacks essentials like structural equality, until 2015 or so very weak class-based object-oriented programming, and to this day has numerous footguns that are tricky to remove without breaking the web, like `==`, `this` scoping, and Array.prototype.sort() being in-place. JavaScript is turning complete and I prefer it’s semantics to the lawless land of Perl, but it ultimately does not serve its users as a general purpose programming language for getting things done - it serves the web foremost, and as a distant second there’s specialized programming environments like Node and Bun with priorities like “asynchronous” that struggle with POSIX/system scripting basics like fork(2), execve(2), working with files in simple ways. Don’t even get me started on FFI/calling into dynamic libraries, which is the bread and butter of scientific computing. FFI is in the stdlib in Ruby; but requires writing or compiling C++ for Node, or a monstrous stack of compilers for the web. JavaScript is interesting because there are so many healthy alternative runtimes, but when it comes to getting things done with data, both Python and Ruby are much more straightforward and prioritize developer happiness & utility, instead of standardized web compatibility.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  > Don’t even get me started on FFI/calling into dynamic libraries, which is the bread and butter of scientific computing. Which is, incidentally, one of the things Bun provides. Like you said: there are indeed healthy alternative runtimes. Said runtimes can (and often do) readily provide a richer standard library, or break web compatibility to resolve footguns, or what have you. Bun seems to be making good progress to that effect, and my point in the previous comment presupposes that it succeeds.
  - jitl 4y ago
    I haven’t seen any runtime fix/add structural equality, array methods, or this scope

adenozine 4y ago

I can see based on your perspective that you haven't collaborated with hundreds of STEM professionals, postdocs, or researchers. I can also see that your comment fails to address the meat of mine, despite being a reply to it. Python is extremely easy to get tasks done with, there's a minimal amount of ceremony and PLT background knowledge needed to program it. I love Perl, but explaining how $ and @ work differently given the point of usage is annoying, and if I taught Perl all day every day, it'd be a continuous annoyance. I don't have the studies and data to back up my opinion, but a lifetime of work has taught me the certainty that Python is one of the greatest languages ever created, that quite literally ANYBODY who can type and read English can learn to become effective with it, and that it blows every competitor out of the water by a large margin with regards to getting from Point A to Point B as a novice programmer. As more of the world becomes programmers, that facet alone cements Python's continued success and its place in PLT history. It's the human part of the language, not the object system or type theory or compiler internals or any of the esoteric technical bits. Nobody can teach someone to program in anything other than Python quicker than I could teach them to program in Python. But anyhow, this is well below my time to spend in a discussion like this. I mean this in the nicest way possible: I've probably spent more time teaching and training people who weren't programmers to write good programs then you've spent programming throughout your life. People who work in the White House, DARPA, the FDA, DOT, IRS, you name it. I know I can't PROVE my position, but time will. Python will always win eventually.

rykuno 4y ago
Honestly though, the original comment was just a plea for more competition to drive innovation it seems. Most of the data scientists I've worked with are programmer hobbyists as well. We've used Javascript/Python/Go/R. Maybe this will exist for people in that demographic, those who are data scientists that already are solid in programming. Regardless, more cool toys are good.
yellowapple 4y ago
> I can see based on your perspective that you haven't collaborated with hundreds of STEM professionals, postdocs, or researchers. Surely you know the saying about what happens when you ass-u-me. But hey, if that's the tone you'd like to set, then I'm happy to oblige... > I can also see that your comment fails to address the meat of mine There was no meat to yours. "Python is good for scientific uses because reasons and JS is not because reasons; also, here are some cheap shots at JS being a weekend project despite there having been literal decades of work since Brendan Eich invented it". That's the sort of drivel I'd expect from novices using tribalism as a substitute for an informed opinion, not someone who claims to have sufficient expertise in programming to competently educate someone else. > I love Perl, but explaining how $ and @ work differently given the point of usage is annoying, and if I taught Perl all day every day, it'd be a continuous annoyance. Explaining to beginners why their programs break if they don't get indentation perfectly right strikes me as no less of a continuous annoyance. On that note, Ruby lacks either of those issues. Same with Lua. Same with Javascript. > ANYBODY who can type and read English can learn to become effective with it That's true of pretty much every scripting language out there; that's indeed what usually sets scripting languages apart from systems languages. > it blows every competitor out of the water by a large margin with regards to getting from Point A to Point B as a novice programmer Not every competitor. It's one of a category of languages which novices in significant numbers successfully learn reasonably quickly - and significant numbers of novices do become successful with Ruby or Lua or - yes - JS just as quickly as novices do with Python. > I mean this in the nicest way possible: I've probably spent more time teaching and training people who weren't programmers to write good programs then you've spent programming throughout your life. I mean this in the nicest way possible: if your comments here are representative of your teaching and training of others, then you owe your students refunds and apologies. I would hope that you don't teach your students blatant misinformation like JS being merely a weekend project (as if Python wasn't?) or fanboyishly insist that "Python will always win eventually" as if programming is all about winners and losers rather than using the right tool for the job. If you do teach your students such, then they are worse off for it, and deserve someone who actually educates rather than misinforms. If you're as good a teacher as you claim to be, then the language doesn't matter; the differences between the various scripting languages out there are minute in comparison to the fundamental concepts like "how do I write and call functions?" or "how do I store data and use it later?". Likewise, to your average non-programmer, the language doesn't matter. What matters is the path of least resistance between "I need to do this thing" and "I have done this thing". Sometimes that's Python. Sometimes that's JS. Hell, sometimes that's something totally bonkers like Haskell. Python is one of several paths of least resistance for scientists in particular not because of anything to do with the language itself, but rather because of a library and tooling ecosystem that formed around it by happenstance; no reason why that couldn't happen for JS, or any other scripting language.

hermitcrab 4y ago

>it's rather in the category of Perl or Fortran: languages that happened to be useful to scientists by happenstance From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran : "Fortran was originally developed by IBM in the 1950s for scientific and engineering applications"

yellowapple 4y ago
Fair enough; edited, and thanks for the correction.

jitl 4y ago

JavaScript has a very weak standard library. The language & standard library lacks essentials like structural equality, until 2015 or so very weak class-based object-oriented programming, and to this day has numerous footguns that are tricky to remove without breaking the web, like `==`, `this` scoping, and Array.prototype.sort() being in-place. JavaScript is turning complete and I prefer it’s semantics to the lawless land of Perl, but it ultimately does not serve its users as a general purpose programming language for getting things done - it serves the web foremost, and as a distant second there’s specialized programming environments like Node and Bun with priorities like “asynchronous” that struggle with POSIX/system scripting basics like fork(2), execve(2), working with files in simple ways. Don’t even get me started on FFI/calling into dynamic libraries, which is the bread and butter of scientific computing. FFI is in the stdlib in Ruby; but requires writing or compiling C++ for Node, or a monstrous stack of compilers for the web. JavaScript is interesting because there are so many healthy alternative runtimes, but when it comes to getting things done with data, both Python and Ruby are much more straightforward and prioritize developer happiness & utility, instead of standardized web compatibility.

yellowapple 4y ago
> Don’t even get me started on FFI/calling into dynamic libraries, which is the bread and butter of scientific computing. Which is, incidentally, one of the things Bun provides. Like you said: there are indeed healthy alternative runtimes. Said runtimes can (and often do) readily provide a richer standard library, or break web compatibility to resolve footguns, or what have you. Bun seems to be making good progress to that effect, and my point in the previous comment presupposes that it succeeds.
- jitl 4y ago
  I haven’t seen any runtime fix/add structural equality, array methods, or this scope