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Python needs to be revived? I always thought of Python as being a great utility programming language. It's not really a specialist, more of a jack of all trade

by gexla 12y ago

Python needs to be revived? I always thought of Python as being a great utility programming language. It's not really a specialist, more of a jack of all trades. For example PHP is all about web development. Ruby is probably most well known for Rails and also widely used for web development. Python is widely used for web development, but that's not necessarily the first thing you think of for Python. What's going to keep any programming language alive is the libraries that become so well entrenched that a competing library would have a serious uphill battle to even come close to matching functionality. Python has a lot of libraries like this for scientific tools. I'm always skeptical to hear that a developer has moved from X programming language to Go. I wonder how many of these tales are from developers who are actually referring to what they do in their spare time rather than their day jobs. Go is still early enough that doing the sorts of things which create the most jobs is still more painful than it needs to be (and so you would probably be doing these things in a different ecosystem.) It seems that the real Go job generating stories are from start-ups which have hit some momentum, received funding and are rewriting parts of their stack in Go. The mass job generators are still at the Rails / Django / PHP / JS levels.

rdtsc 12y ago
> I'm always skeptical to hear that a developer has moved from X programming language to Go. I see what you mean. Also, presumably those that didn't switch, that use and love Python, are not very compelled to write a "We are still staying with Python" blog. And I think they should. Marketing and perception is important.
- chrismonsanto 12y ago
  I'm using Python 3.4. All the libraries I need are available, including the world's best database library, SQLAlchemy. It's a more pleasant experience than Python 2.x. And I have the peace of mind knowing that I'm not stuck on a legacy, deprecated platform. I used to stick up for Python 3 on HN and other places but I've given up. I have no interest in converting people going to Go. And no matter what Python (or any other language) does, they are going to lose users to JavaScript. Also, my experience is that people who feel passionate about Python 2.x will shout down people who are using Python 3 with "nobody uses Python 3." Who has time for that?
  - sergiosgc 12y ago
    I thought I was alone. I also stopped trying to convert people to Python 3. It is a much better language. By this point, it should be obvious. After taking it for a test lap, and after cursing at forgetting parenthesis on print for the hundredth time, you get it. Anyone who uses python and, by this time, hasn't taken python 3 for a test run isn't worth my advocacy time.
    - adamc 12y ago
      I don't think it's a question of test runs. For most of us, it's a question of waiting for various libraries to be ported.
      - pekk 12y ago
        How do you know what "most of us" think?
        collyw 12y ago
        speaks to people, reads forums, participates in conversations like this.... When I have seen people talking about sticking with Python 2, its either because A) why bother I don't need to B) a specific library is not Python 3 yet.
        pekk 12y ago
        Selective hearing has not provided the other side of the story. Because it's not true at all that everyone or even a clear majority agrees with the viewpoint you've expressed
      - kazagistar 12y ago
        The porting is not that hard. Almost every library which isn't ported at this point is probably legacy, depreciated for something significantly better, or abandoned.
    - collyw 12y ago
- shadowmint 12y ago
  Spot on. Id love to see a bunch of 'I swapped to python 3 and it was amazing because... [reason]' posts. If nothing else It'd illustrate clearly either the python 3 folks haven't got a leg to stand on (unable to come up with any tangible real life [reason]) or that there are actually compelling reasons to swap over to python 3; in which case we can point people to those posts in threads like this. (personally I forayed into 3 but couldn't find any [reason] to stay there; I keep dropping into threads like this hoping to find one...)
  - Aardshaark 12y ago
    Here's a small reason I found when refactoring some code today: http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3102/ http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3102/ Like I said, it's a small reason, but it would have made my life much easier today. Enough small reasons add up.
  - collyw 12y ago
    I had some bug in a Django library, that went away by using Python 3. Can’t remember what it was exactly, but it was related to Unicode support.
tptacek 12y ago
We see Golang in production in our practice pretty regularly. Not many shops use it exclusively, but it pops up in backend systems. You're right that there are things Python does that are painful in Golang (SQL databases are a good example), but the things Golang does better than Python/Ruby, it does way, way better than Python/Ruby. Python is, of course, ubiquitous among startups and west coast tech companies; it is basically Startup Java.
- dvirsky 12y ago
  We switched some of our services from Python to Go and are very happy. To be more precise - we chose Go over Python for new projects that would have been developed in Python a year ago; we didn't rewrite anything from scratch in Go - though we'll probably do it for a couple of services. I don't see us stopping using Python any time soon and not just for the legacy factor and cost of switching. It has its place, and Go has its shortcomings, and together they make a nice balance. BTW we'd also love to move to Python 3 because of Unicode issues, but currently we have so many 3rd party libraries that are Python 2.7 only, that it's not feasible.

by gexla 12y ago

rdtsc 12y ago

> I'm always skeptical to hear that a developer has moved from X programming language to Go. I see what you mean. Also, presumably those that didn't switch, that use and love Python, are not very compelled to write a "We are still staying with Python" blog. And I think they should. Marketing and perception is important.

chrismonsanto 12y ago
I'm using Python 3.4. All the libraries I need are available, including the world's best database library, SQLAlchemy. It's a more pleasant experience than Python 2.x. And I have the peace of mind knowing that I'm not stuck on a legacy, deprecated platform. I used to stick up for Python 3 on HN and other places but I've given up. I have no interest in converting people going to Go. And no matter what Python (or any other language) does, they are going to lose users to JavaScript. Also, my experience is that people who feel passionate about Python 2.x will shout down people who are using Python 3 with "nobody uses Python 3." Who has time for that?
- sergiosgc 12y ago
  I thought I was alone. I also stopped trying to convert people to Python 3. It is a much better language. By this point, it should be obvious. After taking it for a test lap, and after cursing at forgetting parenthesis on print for the hundredth time, you get it. Anyone who uses python and, by this time, hasn't taken python 3 for a test run isn't worth my advocacy time.
  - adamc 12y ago
    I don't think it's a question of test runs. For most of us, it's a question of waiting for various libraries to be ported.
    - pekk 12y ago
      How do you know what "most of us" think?
      - collyw 12y ago
        speaks to people, reads forums, participates in conversations like this.... When I have seen people talking about sticking with Python 2, its either because A) why bother I don't need to B) a specific library is not Python 3 yet.
        pekk 12y ago
        Selective hearing has not provided the other side of the story. Because it's not true at all that everyone or even a clear majority agrees with the viewpoint you've expressed
    - kazagistar 12y ago
      The porting is not that hard. Almost every library which isn't ported at this point is probably legacy, depreciated for something significantly better, or abandoned.
  - collyw 12y ago
shadowmint 12y ago
Spot on. Id love to see a bunch of 'I swapped to python 3 and it was amazing because... [reason]' posts. If nothing else It'd illustrate clearly either the python 3 folks haven't got a leg to stand on (unable to come up with any tangible real life [reason]) or that there are actually compelling reasons to swap over to python 3; in which case we can point people to those posts in threads like this. (personally I forayed into 3 but couldn't find any [reason] to stay there; I keep dropping into threads like this hoping to find one...)
- Aardshaark 12y ago
  Here's a small reason I found when refactoring some code today: http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3102/ http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3102/ Like I said, it's a small reason, but it would have made my life much easier today. Enough small reasons add up.
- collyw 12y ago
  I had some bug in a Django library, that went away by using Python 3. Can’t remember what it was exactly, but it was related to Unicode support.

tptacek 12y ago

We see Golang in production in our practice pretty regularly. Not many shops use it exclusively, but it pops up in backend systems. You're right that there are things Python does that are painful in Golang (SQL databases are a good example), but the things Golang does better than Python/Ruby, it does way, way better than Python/Ruby. Python is, of course, ubiquitous among startups and west coast tech companies; it is basically Startup Java.

dvirsky 12y ago
We switched some of our services from Python to Go and are very happy. To be more precise - we chose Go over Python for new projects that would have been developed in Python a year ago; we didn't rewrite anything from scratch in Go - though we'll probably do it for a couple of services. I don't see us stopping using Python any time soon and not just for the legacy factor and cost of switching. It has its place, and Go has its shortcomings, and together they make a nice balance. BTW we'd also love to move to Python 3 because of Unicode issues, but currently we have so many 3rd party libraries that are Python 2.7 only, that it's not feasible.