4 ms·

If you perceive this as "abrasive", "one-sided", or "attacking", that was a quite intentional effect. The whole point is that if you read something like that a

If you perceive this as "abrasive", "one-sided", or "attacking", that was a quite intentional effect. The whole point is that if you read something like that and all you glean is "this guy doesn't like Python", rather than "I will take those results into consideration if and when appropriate", you stunt your own ability to learn new information. It reminds me of the book The Scout Mindset.

theamk 2y ago
Especially with stand-alone posts, you need to build trust before you present an argument, or readers might assume the author either does not really know what they are talking about, or maliciously omitting information to steer the decision in the direction they want. Either way, this is a reason to mis-trust the text. For example, take the first two sentences: > Pure Python is generally a slow language. Written for performance, it will often be around 40-50 times slower than C, and Python “written for performance” is Python that is very straightforward and does not use many of its features. It gives correct fact ("pure python is generally slow language") and then talks about Python "written for performance". See the deception? Most readers on reading this sentence would assume that people write pure python for performance. That is simply not the case - high performance Python projects are never pure Python. If author really thought that "tool choice decisions are complicated", they would have followed up with something like: ... Python project which deal with massive data sets do majority of their logic in C or C++. For example a math simulation which spends most of the time multiplying matrixes in BLAS/LAPACK would be almost as fast as C++ version. So will neural networks which wrap Python around C++ core, or a video processing app which does all the actual work via OpenCV library. But if your use case deals with many small objects (like if you are writing message server), then Python's overhead can be a really big problem. but I don't see anything like this in the text. And this is why people call this text is "abrasive" and "one-sided" - because it is.
- cormorant 2y ago
  > people call this text is "abrasive" and "one-sided" - because it is. Yeah. It is. I think the first half of the blog post is deliberately not a "good" blog post - it is deliberately written as if by someone with an agenda to push. I don't think the author necessarily has that agenda, I think he's role-playing it, as a set-up to his real point. Reread the whole second half and it is clear. "You can write something similar about any useful technology." EDIT: I'm not saying the whole theatrical presentation was good persuasive writing, I'm just interpreting it.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

theamk 2y ago

Especially with stand-alone posts, you need to build trust before you present an argument, or readers might assume the author either does not really know what they are talking about, or maliciously omitting information to steer the decision in the direction they want. Either way, this is a reason to mis-trust the text. For example, take the first two sentences: > Pure Python is generally a slow language. Written for performance, it will often be around 40-50 times slower than C, and Python “written for performance” is Python that is very straightforward and does not use many of its features. It gives correct fact ("pure python is generally slow language") and then talks about Python "written for performance". See the deception? Most readers on reading this sentence would assume that people write pure python for performance. That is simply not the case - high performance Python projects are never pure Python. If author really thought that "tool choice decisions are complicated", they would have followed up with something like: ... Python project which deal with massive data sets do majority of their logic in C or C++. For example a math simulation which spends most of the time multiplying matrixes in BLAS/LAPACK would be almost as fast as C++ version. So will neural networks which wrap Python around C++ core, or a video processing app which does all the actual work via OpenCV library. But if your use case deals with many small objects (like if you are writing message server), then Python's overhead can be a really big problem. but I don't see anything like this in the text. And this is why people call this text is "abrasive" and "one-sided" - because it is.

cormorant 2y ago
> people call this text is "abrasive" and "one-sided" - because it is. Yeah. It is. I think the first half of the blog post is deliberately not a "good" blog post - it is deliberately written as if by someone with an agenda to push. I don't think the author necessarily has that agenda, I think he's role-playing it, as a set-up to his real point. Reread the whole second half and it is clear. "You can write something similar about any useful technology." EDIT: I'm not saying the whole theatrical presentation was good persuasive writing, I'm just interpreting it.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]