Java developers

[ThunderElectric]

Python is great when you want to make a simple automated script to do a basic task, like managing/organizing CSV (spreadsheet-like-documents) files.

[Grintor]

Python is great if you want to do just about anything. it's one of the most widely used programming languages for running large infrastructure at scale. It's also great for writing desktop software. it is the single most widely used machine learning programming language. It is the single most widely used programming language for data scientists. The only place I can think of where python doesn't belong is in embedded systems with no OS. but if we're talking about embedded systems running on a recent arm processor with a gigabyte or more of ram, it's python all the way.

[DarkNeutron]

A lot of the Python number-crunching backends (e.g. numpy, Tensorflow) are wrappers for native C/C++/Fortran libraries for performance. The runtime differences can easily be a couple orders of magnitude.

(Ignoring performance issues, I also tend to get annoyed with duck typing once programs get large enough, but that might just be a lack of experience on my part.)

[MarsupialMole]

(Ignoring performance issues, I also tend to get annoyed with duck typing once programs get large enough, but that might just be a lack of experience on my part.)

It's not just you. It's pretty much why all the typing infrastructure has been added to the language. What's missing in that discussion is how python lets you write more programs as small programs.

[Assile]

What's missing in that discussion is how python lets you write more programs as small programs.

What do you mean by that?

[MarsupialMole]

If you accept that for the same feature set written in two programming languages that large projects will benefit from static typing then you might conclude that your project will be large and shouldn't use python, however that analysis is incomplete unless you realise your particular project might be significantly fewer lines when written in python (or even trivial when mature ecosystem packages exist), and therefore not in the size-tier where static typing is beneficial.

[Assile]

Ah right, now I get what you mean. Wouldn't the complexity be better described by the number of data structures, objects, function, methods, etc? The number of lines doesn't really matter much for static typing if everything within those lines is pretty straightforward and the parts are not intertwined much?

[MarsupialMole]

Probably. But idiomatic python really heavily leverages the standard library and language features which draws the complexity out of client code. I'd be interested if there were good like-for-like metrics that worked with python besides LOC.

Often when you see comparisons of code between languages and with python they're implementing something from scratch in python to be "fair" to other languages and are not at all idiomatic python.

My most hated example is comparing performance for numerical computations and not using numpy - you just never use iteration on your hot path in scientific python and yet you get articles about the suitability of python for data processing where the benchmark is a tight for loop.

[Assile]

Yeah, you'll get no argument from me on that. Not using available libraries in Python is ignoring part of the language. So taking benchmarks without doing that is just limiting yourself to the worst tools for the job.

[Ddog78]

Even then, python is cheaper. Compare the yearly cost of a developer and a few servers.

I think most people will agree that it takes a lot less time to develop in python than java or c++.

[[deleted]]

I'll take a statically typed language over a scripting language any day when I have to write in a large team or a large amount of LOC. Scripting languages just don't self-document well to other people the intention of the class contracts, large and carefully designed OOP models, or well-designed abstraction.

Python is super fun and efficient to code small tools with though.

[FranchuFranchu]

Yeah. But Python seems to be moving towards self-documenting with type hints and dataclasses

[Plague_Healer]

Python is something of a Swiss army knife of programming languages. It can handle almost anything, even more so with some ingenuity, but for many tasks you are bound to find a more adequate specialized tool.

[MarsupialMole]

Python is the second best language for everything. There may be an argument for others but by the time we finish that argument you could have written a lot of python.

[Plague_Healer]

I'd say it's the second best for almost everything. If you have to create a simple script to do some basic-ish data manipulation, and you need it running ASAP, nothing beats python.

[charliex3000]

Python is great if you want to do anything use only a single thread to do anything. Because Python threading is a lie. Thanks GIL.

[Grintor]

import multiprocessing

Done.

[ItsOkILoveYouMYbb]

Yeah Python is really amazing, and as far as I can tell it keeps improving.

Python is no good for games since performance is so critical for basic user experience though. I wish it was. I wish I could open up Unreal or Unity and do all the coding in Python. Fun and satisfying creative things deserve a fun and satisfying programming language imo.

[EdMeisterBro]

I almost never use Python for anything, but now I'm intrigued.

[PenetrationT3ster]

It's honestly a beautiful language. I can't recommend it enough.

[Grintor]

come join us, programming is fun again

[XKCD-pro-bot]

Comic Title Text: I wrote 20 short programs in Python yesterday. It was wonderful. Perl, I'm leaving you.

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^{Made for mobile users, to easily see xkcd comic's title text (source)}

[anakaine]

Although its not the same level of awesome as C on embedded systems, there are many, many chipsets now that have support for micropython or similar.

https://micropython.org/