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I've seen a bunch of code like this, usually written by juniors once they get a bit of experience and discover the concept of types. A surefire way to make you

I've seen a bunch of code like this, usually written by juniors once they get a bit of experience and discover the concept of types. A surefire way to make your Python code terrible. The whole point of Python is the duck typing. If you're not going to use that then you might as well use a real programming language.

silviot 3y ago
Can you enumerate the languages that you deem "real" and those you don't? I have a very hard time understanding what meaning you give to that word.
- mgaunard 3y ago
  Languages that you would build serious production software in, rather than some script. C, C++ are the main ones.
  - linkdd 3y ago
    So you deny that the industry used Python to build serious production softwares? Understood, no need to argue then, I don't think any amount of proof would change your mind...
    - mgaunard 3y ago
      I also do not consider websites or smartphone apps to be serious software, despite the huge amount of work that happens to be done there. You know the rule, 99% of everything is crud.
      - iudqnolq 3y ago
        I find it hard to understand how you can believe something like Dropbox isn't "serious production" just because it involves websites and apps.
        mgaunard 3y ago
        the program that does the synchronization of files in the background is.
        Shish2k 3y ago
        Last time I checked, that part was written in Python...
        kobzol 3y ago
        https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/rewriting-the-heart-of-our-sync-engine https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/rewriting-the-heart-of-o...
        mgaunard 3y ago
        And the fact that they're spending so much time on it and were afraid to rewrite it tells you all you need to know. Rewriting it in C++, leveraging the platform-specific APIs for disk I/O (sync_file_range on Linux, not even wrapped by a Python module) would yield not only much better performance, but also much higher reliability. As it is this daemon is a recipe for page thrashing. Not that I would expect a Python dev to actually know how a kernel works.
        ReflectedImage 3y ago
        Most Kernel devs are Python devs. You ship C code which is extensively tested by Python code. Python is simple to use, got good C interop and the performance of your test frameworks hardly matters.
  - hmry 3y ago
    Lots of production software is written in Python, for better or for worse. In fact, production software gets written in every language eventually, no matter the intent of its designers. Maybe you only write your production software in C and C++, in which case good for you.
    - mgaunard 3y ago
      I do write Python code used in production, but does that doesn't make it serious production software. It takes a lot of effort to make a Python program not break on some inputs, so it's not really fire and forget like it is with C++. It's possible but it requires many more iterations.
      - asib 3y ago
        > ...so it's not really fire and forget like it is with C++. Seriously questionable assertion to my eyes. Maybe I just haven't used C++ in way too long to appreciate that it's true. I have heard lots of people say that modern C++ is really great.
        tialaramex 3y ago
        [flagged]
      - winrid 3y ago
        Fire and forget? I am not gonna even bother to list all the "modern" software in C++ with serious bugs or security defects...
  - 8589934591 3y ago
    Out of genuine curiousity, what do you consider as serious production software? C C++ would probably help in embedded but I highly doubt they are used in every other domains.
  - holler 3y ago
    So, you realize Instagram, Pinterest, and a whole host of other unicorn software companies started out with python (often using django) right? And many, many current startups continue to do so.
    - mgaunard 3y ago
      They're websites, come on.
      - holler 3y ago
        Instagram is a website with billions of people on it.
pmontra 3y ago
Replace real with different and I'll fully agree with you.
twelvechairs 3y ago
A senior Python Dev knows the real answer is to stick 'assert's around the place sporadically and start using optional arguments like 'failonerror=False' Realistically I think it depends what you are doing. For some code type hinting is useful. Some code it is not.
otabdeveloper4 3y ago
Most people don't know a real programming language. (And using types in Python/PHP is a good way to start.)
hmry 3y ago
Hmm, could you explain what makes it terrible?
raincole 3y ago
The whole point of Python is to interoperate with existing Python code, which is unfortunately already everywhere and won't go away.
raverbashing 3y ago
> I've seen a bunch of code like this, usually written by juniors Yes and I'm going to be honest, my first worry when type hints came around is that the language would be inundated by the java drones where they would enforce this 100% of the time. Instead it seems people are mostly using it where it makes sense (APIs, etc) Type hints are a great asset. You don't have to use it everywhere. And it should remain that way
linkdd 3y ago
Type hints communicate intents. They can be used for many things. Django-Ninja use them to do dependency injection and generate schemas for your API (using pydantic). autodoc use them to generate the documentation of your function. etc... It does not replace duck typing, proof here: https://peps.python.org/pep-0544/ https://peps.python.org/pep-0544/
8589934591 3y ago
Typically, the selection of a programming language is predetermined in brownfield projects, leaving little room for choosing the "ideal" programming language for migration unless it is absolutely necessary (go can be a suitable option for migrations). Code, like the one provided by the OP, should be valued and encouraged to prevent future bugs. Incorporating tools like Mypy during pre-commit and pyright during code editing can make a significant difference. This approach helps eliminate the need for writing unnecessary unit tests that check for None type. In my opinion, as a mid-senior developer, I always appreciate the use of types in Python. If you are confident about having predictable inputs, you can rely on duck typing and use it primarily for scripting purposes.
- mgaunard 3y ago
  I'm pretty sure any serious company uses C++ for the code that matters, and Python for orchestration (assuming no high scalability requirements), GUI, offline data analysis and calibration, etc.
  - rglullis 3y ago
    Your idea of "serious company" is outdated by at least 20 years.
- v21 3y ago
  > Typically, the selection of a programming language is predetermined in brownfield projects, leaving little room for choosing the "ideal" programming language for migration unless it is absolutely necessary (go can be a suitable option for migrations). Yep - or it's the standard for some tasks & the important thing is being able to use the ecosystem of external packages that everyone else uses. In this case, the author is working on AI & computer vision, for which everyone else uses Python. Python could be a much worse language than it is and using Python would still be the right choice in this scenario.
  - mgaunard 3y ago
    In computer vision, you use Python for prototyping and research. It of course gets rewritten if it's to be actually used, think for example of the guidance system in a car, plane, or weapon. It's pretty much the same for AI, except that there is an increasing trend in AI of it being used by people that do not have the skills to do the productionization.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
RhysU 3y ago
> The whole point of Python is the duck typing. Duck typing implies that "Should this work?" has one true answer: "Did it work?" I am at work to work, not to play guess-and-check with upstream libraries.
- ReflectedImage 3y ago
  When you couple that with an interpreted language with no compile time, finding the answer to did it work is often faster than should it work. Using Duck typing in a scripting language is the correct choice.
  - RhysU 3y ago
    (Sure, no compile time. But how much time do you think humanity collectively wastes waiting for CPython to import things? On. Every. Run.) "Did it work?" is a point-in-time observation. It is always situational. To find out, I have to construct esoteric objects with unobservable internal state and hope it is the state that I actually care about. "Should it work?" has an answer of infinite duration. I can recall what I learned years later without needing to re-run some experiment.
    - ReflectedImage 3y ago
      Yes but "Did it work?" can be discovered faster than "Should it work?". This means companies that ask "Did it work?" are more commerically competitive than companies that ask "Should it work?". The companies that ask "Should it work?" will eventually be eliminated by the market place.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]

silviot 3y ago

Can you enumerate the languages that you deem "real" and those you don't? I have a very hard time understanding what meaning you give to that word.

mgaunard 3y ago
Languages that you would build serious production software in, rather than some script. C, C++ are the main ones.
- linkdd 3y ago
  So you deny that the industry used Python to build serious production softwares? Understood, no need to argue then, I don't think any amount of proof would change your mind...
  - mgaunard 3y ago
    I also do not consider websites or smartphone apps to be serious software, despite the huge amount of work that happens to be done there. You know the rule, 99% of everything is crud.
    - iudqnolq 3y ago
      I find it hard to understand how you can believe something like Dropbox isn't "serious production" just because it involves websites and apps.
      - mgaunard 3y ago
        the program that does the synchronization of files in the background is.
        Shish2k 3y ago
        Last time I checked, that part was written in Python...
        kobzol 3y ago
        https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/rewriting-the-heart-of-our-sync-engine https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/rewriting-the-heart-of-o...
        mgaunard 3y ago
        And the fact that they're spending so much time on it and were afraid to rewrite it tells you all you need to know. Rewriting it in C++, leveraging the platform-specific APIs for disk I/O (sync_file_range on Linux, not even wrapped by a Python module) would yield not only much better performance, but also much higher reliability. As it is this daemon is a recipe for page thrashing. Not that I would expect a Python dev to actually know how a kernel works.
        ReflectedImage 3y ago
        Most Kernel devs are Python devs. You ship C code which is extensively tested by Python code. Python is simple to use, got good C interop and the performance of your test frameworks hardly matters.
- hmry 3y ago
  Lots of production software is written in Python, for better or for worse. In fact, production software gets written in every language eventually, no matter the intent of its designers. Maybe you only write your production software in C and C++, in which case good for you.
  - mgaunard 3y ago
    I do write Python code used in production, but does that doesn't make it serious production software. It takes a lot of effort to make a Python program not break on some inputs, so it's not really fire and forget like it is with C++. It's possible but it requires many more iterations.
    - asib 3y ago
      > ...so it's not really fire and forget like it is with C++. Seriously questionable assertion to my eyes. Maybe I just haven't used C++ in way too long to appreciate that it's true. I have heard lots of people say that modern C++ is really great.
      - tialaramex 3y ago
        [flagged]
    - winrid 3y ago
      Fire and forget? I am not gonna even bother to list all the "modern" software in C++ with serious bugs or security defects...
- 8589934591 3y ago
  Out of genuine curiousity, what do you consider as serious production software? C C++ would probably help in embedded but I highly doubt they are used in every other domains.
- holler 3y ago
  So, you realize Instagram, Pinterest, and a whole host of other unicorn software companies started out with python (often using django) right? And many, many current startups continue to do so.
  - mgaunard 3y ago
    They're websites, come on.
    - holler 3y ago
      Instagram is a website with billions of people on it.

pmontra 3y ago

Replace real with different and I'll fully agree with you.

twelvechairs 3y ago

A senior Python Dev knows the real answer is to stick 'assert's around the place sporadically and start using optional arguments like 'failonerror=False' Realistically I think it depends what you are doing. For some code type hinting is useful. Some code it is not.

otabdeveloper4 3y ago

Most people don't know a real programming language. (And using types in Python/PHP is a good way to start.)

hmry 3y ago

Hmm, could you explain what makes it terrible?

raincole 3y ago

The whole point of Python is to interoperate with existing Python code, which is unfortunately already everywhere and won't go away.

raverbashing 3y ago

> I've seen a bunch of code like this, usually written by juniors Yes and I'm going to be honest, my first worry when type hints came around is that the language would be inundated by the java drones where they would enforce this 100% of the time. Instead it seems people are mostly using it where it makes sense (APIs, etc) Type hints are a great asset. You don't have to use it everywhere. And it should remain that way

linkdd 3y ago

Type hints communicate intents. They can be used for many things. Django-Ninja use them to do dependency injection and generate schemas for your API (using pydantic). autodoc use them to generate the documentation of your function. etc... It does not replace duck typing, proof here: https://peps.python.org/pep-0544/ https://peps.python.org/pep-0544/

8589934591 3y ago

Typically, the selection of a programming language is predetermined in brownfield projects, leaving little room for choosing the "ideal" programming language for migration unless it is absolutely necessary (go can be a suitable option for migrations). Code, like the one provided by the OP, should be valued and encouraged to prevent future bugs. Incorporating tools like Mypy during pre-commit and pyright during code editing can make a significant difference. This approach helps eliminate the need for writing unnecessary unit tests that check for None type. In my opinion, as a mid-senior developer, I always appreciate the use of types in Python. If you are confident about having predictable inputs, you can rely on duck typing and use it primarily for scripting purposes.

mgaunard 3y ago
I'm pretty sure any serious company uses C++ for the code that matters, and Python for orchestration (assuming no high scalability requirements), GUI, offline data analysis and calibration, etc.
- rglullis 3y ago
  Your idea of "serious company" is outdated by at least 20 years.
v21 3y ago
> Typically, the selection of a programming language is predetermined in brownfield projects, leaving little room for choosing the "ideal" programming language for migration unless it is absolutely necessary (go can be a suitable option for migrations). Yep - or it's the standard for some tasks & the important thing is being able to use the ecosystem of external packages that everyone else uses. In this case, the author is working on AI & computer vision, for which everyone else uses Python. Python could be a much worse language than it is and using Python would still be the right choice in this scenario.
- mgaunard 3y ago
  In computer vision, you use Python for prototyping and research. It of course gets rewritten if it's to be actually used, think for example of the guidance system in a car, plane, or weapon. It's pretty much the same for AI, except that there is an increasing trend in AI of it being used by people that do not have the skills to do the productionization.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

RhysU 3y ago

> The whole point of Python is the duck typing. Duck typing implies that "Should this work?" has one true answer: "Did it work?" I am at work to work, not to play guess-and-check with upstream libraries.

ReflectedImage 3y ago
When you couple that with an interpreted language with no compile time, finding the answer to did it work is often faster than should it work. Using Duck typing in a scripting language is the correct choice.
- RhysU 3y ago
  (Sure, no compile time. But how much time do you think humanity collectively wastes waiting for CPython to import things? On. Every. Run.) "Did it work?" is a point-in-time observation. It is always situational. To find out, I have to construct esoteric objects with unobservable internal state and hope it is the state that I actually care about. "Should it work?" has an answer of infinite duration. I can recall what I learned years later without needing to re-run some experiment.
  - ReflectedImage 3y ago
    Yes but "Did it work?" can be discovered faster than "Should it work?". This means companies that ask "Did it work?" are more commerically competitive than companies that ask "Should it work?". The companies that ask "Should it work?" will eventually be eliminated by the market place.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]