5 ms·

What blows my mind is that Python was designed for maths and data science by a maths and data science guy. It should be natural to work with immutable values an

by haspok 3y ago

What blows my mind is that Python was designed for maths and data science by a maths and data science guy. It should be natural to work with immutable values and pipelines in Python, which are natural functional constructs. Yet everything in Python is mutable and pipeline-style programming is not really supported. ??? (A long time ago I tried to teach programming fundamentals to a maths person. She was completely puzzled by x=x+1. X equals to X+1? That was nonsense in their eyes.)

tgv 3y ago
> Python was designed for maths and data science I don't think so. > During Van Rossum's stay at CNRI, he launched the Computer Programming for Everybody (CP4E) initiative, intending to make programming more accessible to more people, with a basic "literacy" in programming languages, similar to the basic English literacy and mathematics skills required by most employers. Python served a central role in this
constantcrying 3y ago
Mathematics is an extremely broad field, the mathematics of a numerical analyst and someone doing algebraic geometry are very different and a programming language for each would look quite different. In python the C and even C++ heritage is quite clear, but it is in no way designed like Miranda and Haskell, which actually target to some extent expressing particular mathematical constructs in code, something which neither C, C++ not python ever aspired to.
mikebenfield 3y ago
> What blows my mind is that Python was designed for maths and data science by a maths and data science guy. Neither of these is true. I actually still find it a little weird that Python became so widely adopted by data science people, and that definitely doesn’t seem to be the main user GvR originally had in mind when creating the language.
- tgv 3y ago
  That isn't weird. It's what they've been taught. CS departments started teaching Python to other departments because of its ease, and it stuck.
channel_t 3y ago
This is false. It was mostly designed as a tool for Unix hackers, with motivations that seem not too dissimilar from perl. It was the ease of use of the language that brought people in from the math/science community who usually weren't programmers. This has often historically led to terrible and non-idiomatic (but working) code, because if you have an idea in your head you can quickly hit the ground running.

by haspok 3y ago

tgv 3y ago

> Python was designed for maths and data science I don't think so. > During Van Rossum's stay at CNRI, he launched the Computer Programming for Everybody (CP4E) initiative, intending to make programming more accessible to more people, with a basic "literacy" in programming languages, similar to the basic English literacy and mathematics skills required by most employers. Python served a central role in this

constantcrying 3y ago

Mathematics is an extremely broad field, the mathematics of a numerical analyst and someone doing algebraic geometry are very different and a programming language for each would look quite different. In python the C and even C++ heritage is quite clear, but it is in no way designed like Miranda and Haskell, which actually target to some extent expressing particular mathematical constructs in code, something which neither C, C++ not python ever aspired to.

mikebenfield 3y ago

> What blows my mind is that Python was designed for maths and data science by a maths and data science guy. Neither of these is true. I actually still find it a little weird that Python became so widely adopted by data science people, and that definitely doesn’t seem to be the main user GvR originally had in mind when creating the language.

tgv 3y ago
That isn't weird. It's what they've been taught. CS departments started teaching Python to other departments because of its ease, and it stuck.

channel_t 3y ago

This is false. It was mostly designed as a tool for Unix hackers, with motivations that seem not too dissimilar from perl. It was the ease of use of the language that brought people in from the math/science community who usually weren't programmers. This has often historically led to terrible and non-idiomatic (but working) code, because if you have an idea in your head you can quickly hit the ground running.