4 ms·

It was great for certain niche applications, like: * The Roxen web server * The Opera Mini backend service (150k CPU cores, 5k servers, 150k pageloads/s, 3 mi

by lysace 2y ago

It was great for certain niche applications, like: * The Roxen web server * The Opera Mini backend service (150k CPU cores, 5k servers, 150k pageloads/s, 3 million inline fetches per second, 100+ Gbit/s - 15 years ago) I worked on both of those projects. Now I mostly program in Python. It's perhaps like 10x slower to run on average but since it won there's a module or three for anything so building stuff is faster. Yay progress.

mrweasel 2y ago
> since it won there's a module or three for anything. I was just browsing the "Module tree reference" for Pike. There seems to be a crazy amount of modules for the language. Weirdly enough for web there's only CGI (and WebSockets for some reason), and the CGI module isn't really documented. Under protocols there seems to be everything I ever need.
- lysace 2y ago
  We kind of went crazy with protocol support, starting early on. It was a good way to learn the protocols in depth. The late 90s was an exciting time. It eventually became a defining feature of the language's library. But we were too busy having fun building the language to "market" it. This became a pattern.
nine_k 2y ago
Python won because of its C interface was easy, so it's got Numpy, Scipy, Pytorch, OpenCV bindings, etc. For these use cases, the speed of the interpreter is mostly irrelevant. On the web dev front, Python was lucky to get easy bolted-on async I/O (via greenlets), so it was more performant than Ruby (which was really slow 10 years ago), and Django was less magical than RoR.
- em-bee 2y ago
  pike's C interface also looks very good. pike had built-in async I/O from the very beginning. the roxen webserver is built on async I/O. it doesn't fork, and on an overloaded system it is one of the last services standing because of that. python likely caught up and overtook pike because it had better community support. one downside of pike is that it is slow to start, making it less convenient for quick scripts, which python was a lot better at, so python was more likely to replace perl in sysadmin work where short scripts matter more further helping its popularity.
- yobbo 2y ago
  No, python had already won by the time django and numpy started. Pike's C interface is better in most ways, but of course that might depend on tastes. Python's easy syntax, accessible documentation, books and tutorials make the learning experience completely different. It's an excellent choice for low-effort small scripts and short-lived projects. It became widespread. At some point it started to be the chosen language in schools. Numpy and django (etc) followed from that. Pike with modernised syntax (something like Swift?) could have been a contender web-language maybe 2005-2006 at the latest. Pike's learning experience was always less welcoming. The module tree reference is great though.
- mananaysiempre 2y ago
  Compared to its closest once-competitors—Lua and Tcl—I’d say CPython’s C API is the worst of the bunch, ergonomically speaking. (Can’t say anything about Perl.)

by lysace 2y ago

mrweasel 2y ago

> since it won there's a module or three for anything. I was just browsing the "Module tree reference" for Pike. There seems to be a crazy amount of modules for the language. Weirdly enough for web there's only CGI (and WebSockets for some reason), and the CGI module isn't really documented. Under protocols there seems to be everything I ever need.

lysace 2y ago
We kind of went crazy with protocol support, starting early on. It was a good way to learn the protocols in depth. The late 90s was an exciting time. It eventually became a defining feature of the language's library. But we were too busy having fun building the language to "market" it. This became a pattern.

nine_k 2y ago

Python won because of its C interface was easy, so it's got Numpy, Scipy, Pytorch, OpenCV bindings, etc. For these use cases, the speed of the interpreter is mostly irrelevant. On the web dev front, Python was lucky to get easy bolted-on async I/O (via greenlets), so it was more performant than Ruby (which was really slow 10 years ago), and Django was less magical than RoR.

em-bee 2y ago
pike's C interface also looks very good. pike had built-in async I/O from the very beginning. the roxen webserver is built on async I/O. it doesn't fork, and on an overloaded system it is one of the last services standing because of that. python likely caught up and overtook pike because it had better community support. one downside of pike is that it is slow to start, making it less convenient for quick scripts, which python was a lot better at, so python was more likely to replace perl in sysadmin work where short scripts matter more further helping its popularity.
yobbo 2y ago
No, python had already won by the time django and numpy started. Pike's C interface is better in most ways, but of course that might depend on tastes. Python's easy syntax, accessible documentation, books and tutorials make the learning experience completely different. It's an excellent choice for low-effort small scripts and short-lived projects. It became widespread. At some point it started to be the chosen language in schools. Numpy and django (etc) followed from that. Pike with modernised syntax (something like Swift?) could have been a contender web-language maybe 2005-2006 at the latest. Pike's learning experience was always less welcoming. The module tree reference is great though.
mananaysiempre 2y ago
Compared to its closest once-competitors—Lua and Tcl—I’d say CPython’s C API is the worst of the bunch, ergonomically speaking. (Can’t say anything about Perl.)