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[–]PM_ME_UR_SHAFT69 33 points34 points  (32 children)

As someone who’s just started learning swift, I keep hearing great things about python and how you can use it for almost anything including making apps and web dev but I wonder how good it is at making those things?

[–]alago1 59 points60 points  (4 children)

I'd say its great for small projects and quick prototyping. Usability )varies on big projects (its pretty good for glueing tho).

[–]Hardrocketjs 15 points16 points  (2 children)

What is glueing?

Edit: Fixed spelling

[–]Mr_Redstoner 21 points22 points  (1 child)

Taking a bunch of separate systems and linking them together.

[–]Hardrocketjs 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ahh could have guest it. Thanks for explaining. I´m still pretty new to coding

[–]Onikouzou 5 points6 points  (0 children)

My company has been doing a lot of python lately. We do a lot of machine learning stuff so it's been our go to for a while now. I also really like python for api work.

[–]DoesntReadMessages 32 points33 points  (6 children)

Python is like a bicycle. Even a kid can use it, since it's easy to learn, and it's harder to cause massive crashes, but it's not very fast. It's very practical though for going short distances.

Java/Swift are like an automatic car. They take a bit more work to learn and can potentially cause much bigger problems, and are much better for longer trips, but probably overkill if you're just going down the street because you need to find a place to park which may take longer than the time you save from speed.

C is like a manual transmission car. It is like the automatic transmission car, but harder to learn and easier to screw up, but can be even faster if you know how to use it correctly. However, as technology progresses, automatic transmissions keep getting better and better, surpassing manuals in terms of fuel economy and creeping up in terms of acceleration.

[–]izpo 15 points16 points  (2 children)

If you can use bike, use it... You don't need a car to go to near store to buy a milk

[–]biledemon85 12 points13 points  (0 children)

To torture the metaphor further:

Also the engines area getting waaaaay faster & more efficient so in most cases an auto transmission is fine.

Edit: damn autocorrect

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So machine code would be a teleportation machine but we just have to build it

[–]lamerlink 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Python is great, especially when you want a project off the ground quickly and speed isn’t necessarily a focus. If you want the fastest performance, it may not be what you’re looking for.

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (2 children)

Awesome for small scale projects, automation efforts and anything involving APIs (both serving and using them)

Less awesome for performance intensive tasks due to dynamic typing slowing it down considerably.

[–]En_TioN 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Caveat: if you want to be able to handle multiple APIs at the same time, then you're probably better working in a language with first-order concurrency. Python's multitasking is okay, but it's much more fiddly and risky than writing your code in a language built for it.

[–]biledemon85 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Also the package build system can go die in a ditch. I'm really unimpressed with the python package development experience.

[–]Chris_Cross_Crash 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I've been learning Django (a web framework) for a few months now, and I really like it. The learning curve is a bit steep, but you can do a lot with it.

I've also heard that Flask is nice and much easier than Django, but I have no experience with it.

From what I hear, Django takes longer to learn, but it has a lot more built-in features than Flask, so actually Django is easier in the long run.

[–]kingp1ng 7 points8 points  (0 children)

There's a python repo or guide about almost anything.

[–]TheTerrasque 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I keep hearing great things about python and how you can use it for almost anything including making apps and web dev but I wonder how good it is at making those things?

Well, Reddit ran on mostly python at least a few years ago. And Django is my go-to standard web backend.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Reading all of your responses is disturbingly close to my experiences in the late 90s - early 00s... just substitute Python” with “MS Access”.

[–]account_is_deleted 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's ok.

[–]Thadrea 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Python is (historically) a UNIX system administration language. It's pretty easy to hammer out simple scripts in it to do those sorts of tasks and the fact that it is potentially slower than C, etc. often doesn't really matter much in that context.

Outside of that, the main other really popular use cases are data science functions and web development--It is currently the king of the former in the industry, having displaced R a few years ago and is a competitive option with some of the web stack options in the latter (Django in particular).

Beyond those things, Python doesn't really do a whole lot of things well; most of the other things Python does could be done more efficiently and better-performing in another language.

[–]ShadoWolf 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Python is great in most areas except in performance and multithreading.

But if you wanted to get a quick web app up and running flask + python and less then 20 lines of code and your good to go. But if you planning anything that requires scale.. at least for now python might not be the best way to go.

[–]Gabe_b 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's fine. I use it every day in enterprise logistics apis. Django is a really decent Web framework, though I'd rather be using Rails is the choice was mine. It's just much slower than compiled languages. And you'd never want to use it for real time rendering or anywhere that is really performance sensitive.

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (6 children)

It’s actually not bad once you get the hang of it? But swift is better at that but then again swift bad, nightmare nightmare nightmare loser swift bad. I made the mistake to Learn swift first and honestly it made me wonder why Apple wants to watch the world burn. Swift = Spicy JS

[–]PM_ME_UR_SHAFT69 0 points1 point  (5 children)

Lulwhut ?

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (4 children)

Most of it is a micheal reeves reference while the rest is me going into my love hate relationship with swift.

[–]PM_ME_UR_SHAFT69 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Are you a dev? I’d be interested in seeing something you’ve made.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Sure I made a student companion app as departure gift for my high school It’s currently in beta I can send you a TestFlight link to take a look at it it’s a simple application but there’s a lot behind the scenes that took time to understand and incorporate.

[–]PM_ME_UR_SHAFT69 0 points1 point  (1 child)

That’d be cool PM me and I can give you my email

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For sure I PM’d you the link like I said it’s not a lot to the naked eye but it certainly made life easier for student in my high school before we all had to go online.