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> This is evasive. How often did you see people describe Python that way before it became as widespread as it is now? Quite a lot back in the early 2.x era bef
by antod 3y ago
> This is evasive. How often did you see people describe Python that way before it became as widespread as it is now?
Quite a lot back in the early 2.x era before the Rails hype first kicked in. It really was a breath of fresh air compared to VB, Perl, JS, early Java or PHP of the time. It had a concise elegant clarity and consistency missing in other mainstream languages back then. And it was a relatively unknown underdog.
eg relevant to HN, here is PG talking about Python 20yrs ago:
https://paulgraham.com/pypar.html https://paulgraham.com/pypar.html
I've spent the last decade in Ruby shops and not done much Python recently, but I still miss those early Python days. Ruby never gave me the same sense of happiness it gave others and there are still things I prefer about Python. But it is subjective and I couldn't objectively say Python is better than Ruby.
Things are very different now - it is a much larger language with a much longer history to trip over, pulled in multiple directions with conflicting expectations, and the user base has changed from that small passionate dedicated community to being the intro to coding blub language that Java or PHP used to be where the average skill level is much lower.