3 ms·

I’m not really a fan of Python as such, but after a few decades in the industry, I’m beginning to think that being good at being bandaid is “better”. I can’t t

by devjab 3y ago

I’m not really a fan of Python as such, but after a few decades in the industry, I’m beginning to think that being good at being bandaid is “better”. I can’t think of a single tech where we don’t have a bunch of duct tape (as we refer to it), not so much because we want to but because that’s just how things end up in the imperfect world of organisations. I value the techs that fit into this reality more than the ones which don’t, but you’re right, Python isn’t really great for any technology based merits, it’s good because the world is a messy place where being productive with your band aid is often more valuable than using the “better” programming language.

Izkata 3y ago
Old proverb that I think applies here: A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.
crabbone 3y ago
Your mistake is going from quantitative claims to categorical without evaluating the quantitative part first. You say "everything is a band aid to some degree", and from that you conclude that "everything is equally bad or good". You conveniently forget the "to some degree" part to further your point. It's similar to saying that all food has some amount of dust in it, so it shouldn't matter whether you just open the vacuum cleaner and eat the stuff collected on the drum, or if you order a meal at a fancy restaurant. There's no evidence that Python "fits into reality" more than any other language. The thing that's going on for it is popularity. Popularity doesn't need to be rooted in technical merits, and in the case of Python it isn't. Finally, Python isn't unique in this sense. Even though the stage for programming language popularity pageant was set relatively recently, the participants learned to abuse the rules of the competition very quickly. There's a "rule" by a statistician whose name I cannot recall at this point which states that once people know the metric they are measured on, they will learn to game it. When we assess language popularity, we most assess how well the language authors or their community was able to game the metric rather than measuring any meaningful aspect of those languages.

by devjab 3y ago

Izkata 3y ago

Old proverb that I think applies here: A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.

crabbone 3y ago

Your mistake is going from quantitative claims to categorical without evaluating the quantitative part first. You say "everything is a band aid to some degree", and from that you conclude that "everything is equally bad or good". You conveniently forget the "to some degree" part to further your point. It's similar to saying that all food has some amount of dust in it, so it shouldn't matter whether you just open the vacuum cleaner and eat the stuff collected on the drum, or if you order a meal at a fancy restaurant. There's no evidence that Python "fits into reality" more than any other language. The thing that's going on for it is popularity. Popularity doesn't need to be rooted in technical merits, and in the case of Python it isn't. Finally, Python isn't unique in this sense. Even though the stage for programming language popularity pageant was set relatively recently, the participants learned to abuse the rules of the competition very quickly. There's a "rule" by a statistician whose name I cannot recall at this point which states that once people know the metric they are measured on, they will learn to game it. When we assess language popularity, we most assess how well the language authors or their community was able to game the metric rather than measuring any meaningful aspect of those languages.