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Can we please not? Humanity wasted close to 50 years optimizing compilers for one garbage language. Wasted unimaginable efforts, money and developer hours... a

Can we please not? Humanity wasted close to 50 years optimizing compilers for one garbage language. Wasted unimaginable efforts, money and developer hours... and all could've been avoided if the same people dedicated a fraction of those resources to language design. Same thing happened with Java. And now the existence of a well-developed compiler became an argument in its own right in favor of choosing a bad language. There's no need or reason to try to make Python run faster. It's a trash language. At best, it deserves a credit for being funny 30 years ago... but that had worn out pretty fast. Now it's just dumb. Improving its compiler will be again a resource sink for the programming community that, in the best case, may hope to produce something of value by accident, independent of its main goal...

naijaboiler 4y ago
yet its the language of choice for several people who are domain experts but not programming experts. It's doing a job for non-programmers who have to program. until a solution exists that does better, python is going nowhere.
- crabbone 4y ago
  There are plenty of things which are bad but universally used. What's your point? Fast food is universally more popular than any healthy food that requires time to cook. People choose to buy low-quality goods in general, trading quality for immediate effect all the time. Take any industry, any product kind, you will see that consumption is skewed towards paying extra for immediate gain rather than paying for quality to minimize waste over time. The fact that you chose to rely on the opinion of non-experts in the field to assess the value / quality of a particular technology only means that you don't understand what quality is about. You are confused between wants and needs.
deleted 4y ago
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Mashimo 4y ago
What is a non-trash programming language?
- crabbone 4y ago
  In general, or specifically in the same niche as Python? Python has several disjoint domains where it's used. So, for example, when it comes to statistics, then J, R or Julia would all be better than Python. Not ideal, but still a lot better. When it comes to infrastructure and ops, then Erlang would've been a lot better. Still not ideal because of how existing implementation deals with deployment (too complicated), but that's not a feature of the language, and could be worked on in the same way how OP wants to work on Python compiler. When it comes to Web... well, I'm not a specialist... and I find everything about Web revolting, so it's hard for me to think about alternatives. On the other hand, there's rarely a language that doesn't come with a Web framework / some tools that allow it to be used to make Web applications. So, just, basically, throw a dart, and wherever it lands it's going to be better than Python with a very high probability. Python is also used to teach intro to computer science. And there's a lot of problems with this idea. Firstly, I don't believe that intro to CS should be taught by way of learning to program. It should give an overview of what CS is about, give some foundation, basic concepts from important fields... just like intro to math does, for example. But if we still have to have intro to CS the way we do today, then Scheme would be a lot better for this. Assembly is also a good pick, but for a different reason. Now, to address the "in general" part: I don't believe that languages like Python should be used universally in different domains. What I believe we need is a language like OMeta, which we specialize for the domains we want to program in, so that we can keep language and compiler mechanics separately from syntax of specific domains. Ironically, this was even obvious at the time of ALGOL design, but nobody waited for it to be implemented and went with the quick-and-dirty solution instead.
fourthark 4y ago
Who is "we"? You don't have to have anything to do with it.
- crabbone 4y ago
  We, the programming community. And I'd rather you would have nothing to do with it than me.
mrtranscendence 4y ago
Such an overwhelming amount of perfectly good solutions are created with Python that I have trouble conceiving it as a "trash" language. Clearly it's at least good enough in many scenarios. For example, I use it for machine learning and data science professionally and I find it much more pleasant to use than alternatives in that space (e.g. Julia and R -- both have advantages over Python but have disadvantages too). It works, it doesn't confuse me, it's easy to find libraries and examples, and when it's too slow -- which is surprisingly rare -- I have other options to turn to. If that's trash then so be it; call me a raccoon because I'm there for the trash.
- crabbone 4y ago
  > Such an overwhelming amount of perfectly good solutions are created with Python Name one. I'll tell you why it's trash. > Clearly it's at least good enough Trash (literal, from the dumpster) is often good enough to eat. What's your point exactly? > I find it much more pleasant to use It's a skill issue. > it's easy to find libraries and examples, This has nothing to do with the language. Give Julia 20 years of popularity, and it will have just as many useful libraries and examples.
hummus_bae 4y ago
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mrkeen 4y ago
> if the same people dedicated a fraction of those resources to language design. What do you mean by language design here? Is it the user-facing bits and the ergonomics? Because it seems to me (as a non python dev) that that's the bit that python devs really like.

naijaboiler 4y ago

yet its the language of choice for several people who are domain experts but not programming experts. It's doing a job for non-programmers who have to program. until a solution exists that does better, python is going nowhere.

crabbone 4y ago
There are plenty of things which are bad but universally used. What's your point? Fast food is universally more popular than any healthy food that requires time to cook. People choose to buy low-quality goods in general, trading quality for immediate effect all the time. Take any industry, any product kind, you will see that consumption is skewed towards paying extra for immediate gain rather than paying for quality to minimize waste over time. The fact that you chose to rely on the opinion of non-experts in the field to assess the value / quality of a particular technology only means that you don't understand what quality is about. You are confused between wants and needs.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Mashimo 4y ago

What is a non-trash programming language?

crabbone 4y ago
In general, or specifically in the same niche as Python? Python has several disjoint domains where it's used. So, for example, when it comes to statistics, then J, R or Julia would all be better than Python. Not ideal, but still a lot better. When it comes to infrastructure and ops, then Erlang would've been a lot better. Still not ideal because of how existing implementation deals with deployment (too complicated), but that's not a feature of the language, and could be worked on in the same way how OP wants to work on Python compiler. When it comes to Web... well, I'm not a specialist... and I find everything about Web revolting, so it's hard for me to think about alternatives. On the other hand, there's rarely a language that doesn't come with a Web framework / some tools that allow it to be used to make Web applications. So, just, basically, throw a dart, and wherever it lands it's going to be better than Python with a very high probability. Python is also used to teach intro to computer science. And there's a lot of problems with this idea. Firstly, I don't believe that intro to CS should be taught by way of learning to program. It should give an overview of what CS is about, give some foundation, basic concepts from important fields... just like intro to math does, for example. But if we still have to have intro to CS the way we do today, then Scheme would be a lot better for this. Assembly is also a good pick, but for a different reason. Now, to address the "in general" part: I don't believe that languages like Python should be used universally in different domains. What I believe we need is a language like OMeta, which we specialize for the domains we want to program in, so that we can keep language and compiler mechanics separately from syntax of specific domains. Ironically, this was even obvious at the time of ALGOL design, but nobody waited for it to be implemented and went with the quick-and-dirty solution instead.

fourthark 4y ago

Who is "we"? You don't have to have anything to do with it.

crabbone 4y ago
We, the programming community. And I'd rather you would have nothing to do with it than me.

mrtranscendence 4y ago

Such an overwhelming amount of perfectly good solutions are created with Python that I have trouble conceiving it as a "trash" language. Clearly it's at least good enough in many scenarios. For example, I use it for machine learning and data science professionally and I find it much more pleasant to use than alternatives in that space (e.g. Julia and R -- both have advantages over Python but have disadvantages too). It works, it doesn't confuse me, it's easy to find libraries and examples, and when it's too slow -- which is surprisingly rare -- I have other options to turn to. If that's trash then so be it; call me a raccoon because I'm there for the trash.

crabbone 4y ago
> Such an overwhelming amount of perfectly good solutions are created with Python Name one. I'll tell you why it's trash. > Clearly it's at least good enough Trash (literal, from the dumpster) is often good enough to eat. What's your point exactly? > I find it much more pleasant to use It's a skill issue. > it's easy to find libraries and examples, This has nothing to do with the language. Give Julia 20 years of popularity, and it will have just as many useful libraries and examples.

hummus_bae 4y ago

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mrkeen 4y ago

> if the same people dedicated a fraction of those resources to language design. What do you mean by language design here? Is it the user-facing bits and the ergonomics? Because it seems to me (as a non python dev) that that's the bit that python devs really like.