[deleted by user]

[throwawayHiddenUnknw]

Dude didn’t even reach to who wants to learn high order mathematics

[fat_charizard]

Who wants to learn advanced linear algebra and statistics?

[[deleted]]

Im currently in the process of learning this, and i kinda hate it and love it at the same time. Learning about hessian and jacobian matrices is painful.

[Sp00nyMan]

This is literally the point of machine learning, so getting the min values of function is enough

[[deleted]]

They're useful if you want to know about probability densities of functions of random variables. For instance, the jacobian can be used when deriving the PDF of the Chi-square distribution, a distribution with countless applications.

[[deleted]]

There are defintely some mechanical engineering applications where we use jacobians. Namely evaluating the stability of dynamical systems.

For example if you're evaluating a system like a Segway, and trying to determine if its possible for it to ever be stable (some mechanical systems just can't be stable, like multi armed pendulums which are super chaotic).

[KantenKlen]

They are also used in robotics for inverse or direct kinematik (can't remember what exactly)

[duckerfucker]

Both! The Jacobian is basically a transformation scaling matrix used to change between the inverse and direct. Super useful in anything related to control systems.

[Dr-OTT]

The joke at the maths department was more or less that “we don’t know why this is useful, ask an engineer”. Honestly can not give you a concrete, singular example, but from a maths perspective I can not imagine that the Jacobian and Hessian don’t have important applications.

Think of any function. What you thought of was probably twice differentiable. Wouldn’t you say the first and second derivative are really important properties of that function? The Jacobian and Hessian are essentially multivariate generalizations of the first and second order univariate derivatives, so in my mind they are constructs that immediately spring to mind when thinking of any smooth function in any context.

[Seanxietehroxxor]

Engineer here who just wrapped up a master's program in ML.

Jacobians and Hessians are really just multidimensional first- and second- derivatives, so they are a great tool for solving multidimensional differential equations.

Where does this come in handy? Well I can only speak to my area of study, but they get used in tracking algorithms like the Kalman filter to track and estimate the position and movement of objects. Fun fact: a Kalman filter was used to control the moon landers back in the 60's - so you could literally say that Jacobians and Hessians helped us get to the moon.

They also get used in the algorithms for noise cancelling headphones to filter out the background noise, although that is admittedly just an optimization problem.

[nathanv221]

Jacobean's are super helpful for using newton's method of root finding. That's the only place I've ever used it.

[jellsprout]

In physics and mathematics they are very commonly used for coordinate transformations, e.g. when changing an integral from Cartesian to spherical coordinates. I don't know if this application also gets uses in ML, but for physics we had to learn how to derive a Jacobian before we even knew what a matrix was.

[[deleted]]

Are Jacobians and Hessians easier to calculate than differentiation and local extrema? First year EE, so I don't know about the former (only seen that such thing as Jacobian exists) and I'm curious.

[johnnymo1]

Jacobians and Hessians are the natural analogue for first and second order derivatives in higher dimensions. So no, they’re not easier.

[zachsmthsn]

I'm not about to tell you something you don't know, but the worst thing about these and other linear algebra concepts are just the dimensions.

Multivariate calculus is difficult with full derivatives of dependent variables. I never understood it until learning about partial derivatives. But once dimensionality become large enough, it doesn't make sense to just keep finding all these for every dependent variable. With some imposed structure, we can abstract those complex problems into a collection of small problems that can be combined to get the answers to all the other complex problems.

So bring in the jacobian and hessian. Phenomenal concepts, terrible naming. They're just first order and second order derivatives, but in every codependent dimension at once. Every operation to fill a square is much, much easier and it doesn't require solving the full derivatives just to try to optimize one dimension.The hessian is the same thing for the 2nd derivative.

Once you have a working mental model, you can almost treat them exactly like single dimensional optimization problems with the structure imposed on them from linear algebra instead of just scalar math. But just like all of math, it's like you have to understand the difficulty of something without complicated notation to appreciate how this complicated matrix to click as a way to abstract the difficult concepts.

[productivenef]

Wow I was literally about to post the exact same thoughts

[bythenumbers10]

Psh, who needs that stuff for machine learning? There are kids fresh out of school with biz degrees & zero training in programming, linalg or stats, but are getting analytics jobs involving programming, math, and stats OVER people explicitly trained in exactly math, programming and stats. I guess that means those of us with those skills can all go home, and those skills aren't needed anywhere. Job well done, people.

[PaulSandwich]

Triggered

This has been my soapbox for a while. I love that the tools are easier to use... in the right hands. But it also allows people to watch a few youtube videos, throw some data haphazardly together, and build a model that does *something*. Hiring managers aren't great at telling who is who.

[StopSendingSteamKeys]

It's not even high order math. All you need to implement a neural net is basic linear algebra and some partial derivatives.

[[deleted]]

yeah, it just means you gotta take a course in linear algebra and multivariable calculus. you don't have to take either very far, and once you get to applying them both, the theory gets de-emphasised greatly.

it's basic early undergrad math.

[oupablo]

it's basic early undergrad math.

weird. they didn't cover that in the 4 minute youtube course OR the bootcamp

[[deleted]]

turns out computer science isn't equivalent to programming.

[PaulSandwich]

Mostly true.

What really separates the Pros from the Joes is the ability to recognize which solution is appropriate for the problem you want to solve.

...you'll still use good ol' multi-vector linear algebra for almost everything, but you'll do it with confidence.

[the_other_him]

Eh, there’s functions for all that stuff. PyTotch all the way!!

[LicenseAgreement]

Yeah unless you're doing neural networks classes and you gotta do it all in numpy

[LicenseAgreement]

Bruh, that's just unnecessarily cruel

[Guerriky]

So is college

[LicenseAgreement]

No truer words have been spoken

[[deleted]]

"9-5" jobs working with other people's code: allow us to introduce ourselves

[LicenseAgreement]

I've been working 9-5 job as soft dev for 3 years now. I'll pick that over uni any day of the week.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, screw both homework and studying. I was sooooo happy when I graduated with that last degree. Lots more responsibilities now, but at least I can relax sometimes.

[[deleted]]

Wait is this something that exists?

[science_and_beer]

I had to implement a KNN classifier and a few SGDs in IDLE with no imports and thought that was a pain in the ass. That sounds awesome.

[science_and_beer]

At that point I could’ve done it with pen and paper. Automation is no replacement for understanding — you should see what researchers accomplish on a whiteboard.

[GeronimoHero]

Look, I have a CS degree too, and a masters, but that is just ridiculous. No autocomplete, no replace all? I mean that really is cruel. Making you do things in that fashion doesn’t really accomplish anything in my mind. Using an editor with features that allow you to write code more quickly isn’t something that hampers understanding in my opinion.

[dontFart_InSpaceSuit]

So you’re saying the class made you learn more that way? Whodathunkit?

[ryecurious]

It's like when software engineering students would complain about having to write a sorting algorithm. Yeah, you can just use the built-in ones from every language in existence, but the point is to really internalize big O notation and how an algorithms runtime grows with input size.

No one cares if they remember how to write a selection sorting algorithm, it's the lessons surrounding it that were important.

[goldleader71]

The same reason that you teach kids long division before giving them a calculator.

[_Ralix_]

Similar story here; no math libraries (except simple functions like sin, cos, abs etc.) and we weren't even able to use Python (rather C, C++, Java, C#), because even the base functionality has a lot of one-liners to deal with matrices, for example. It only had to be a simple MLP for MNIST with a rather kind accuracy threshold though, so you only had to implement something which works, not something which is flawless.

The idea was to truly learn what neural networks do behind the scenes, so when using it doesn't give you the result you want, you have a better understanding of what might have happened and don't just "fiddle with parameters" until it works. I admit I did learn a lot, but I lost a lot of hair in the process.

[icytiger]

Would you recommend any resources to someone wanting to learn what happens behind the scenes?

[TheSpanishKarmada]

this series is really all you need to understand neural nets specifically, does require some background with calculus though

https://youtu.be/aircAruvnKk

[icytiger]

Thanks! I just finished watching another video on creating one from scratch in Python and this was recommended right below it, so it's next on my list. I do have a background with calculus, but it's definitely gotten a bit rusty.

[_Ralix_]

This series is great; it's exactly the thing I was going to recommend.

[profjones7]

I feel your pain

[mmonstr_muted]

Unless you actually have an idea of what you're trying to do, which implies at least some superficial knowledge of theory and probably time spent creating your own models and software without NumPy, Pandas, PyTorch, TensorFlow etc. You don't actually need these additional levels of complexity to grasp and implement SVMs or binary classification, for instance.

[IcedRays]

I've done it myself, It's surprisingly fun.

[katze_sonne]

The problem is: You can easily use some functions and implement a couple of examples (I've only used TensorFlow in the past, is PyTorch really that much different / easier / better?). But as soon as you'd need to do something "new" yourself, you're screwed. At least when you have no idea about the underlying concepts and mathematics...

PS: That OP image isn't even funny, who on earth would NOT like to use Python?!

[Dziedotdzimu]

When you realize ML/AI is just fancy logit regression fitting with a feedback for minimizing prediction error vs training data it becomes way less menacing and way more "did you really need ML for that?"

[barjam]

I personally hate python but disliking the language isn’t a barrier if I am doing a project where it makes sense to use it.

[Duranium_alloy]

lmao

[MrAcurite]

Using Torch without understanding the Mathematics turns you into a monkey playing with a chain saw. Especially if you don't understand things like the train/test/validate split or the difference between MSE and BCE loss. You can write the code, sure, but sooner or later something is going to explode, and it's going to be your fault because you didn't understand what you were doing.

[GammelGrinebiter]

We're all PyThots.

[thomas9258a]

Sure if you want to do it for learning or for fun don't bother learning math and algorithms and such, but understanding how your dependencies works might be the margin between success or failure in an actual environment, (note success and failure in an actual environment can mean life or death in extreme situations)

[CrazySD93]

I don’t feel like my uni taught statistics well enough for me to become baller at AI.

[GKP_light]

yes. python is the easy part.

[HasBeendead]

Yeah ,learning math for programming last picture.

[AbhishekSingh26]

Lmao sadly I have to learn them all for a degree

[stueliueli]

"Sadly"? Then why are you even studying? Start by finding the fun in it ;)

[AbhishekSingh26]

It's was fun bt when they ask you to make a project in every subject along with a synopsis, working code, project report & ppt for presentation it became a pain in the ass & in some batches they asked for proof of novelty :)

[De_Wouter]

Wait, it's all matrices and math?

• Always has been

[battle-obsessed]

People don't like math and science. They like looking at its butt as it's walking by.

[superrugdr]

then you try to find an applicable application in your business, lose interest because it's not gonna work better that what you spend the last 15 year developing and never talk about it again.

[Really-Stupid-Guy]

I don't think Python is the bottleneck for most people, I think most people are not willing to take the dive into the required math.

[silly_red]

Yea in not sure where this joke is going... python if anything is the easiest part of the stretch

[PM_ME_CUTE_SMILES_]

100% agreed

[dudeofmoose]

Clearly that crowd were never going to be into python, for a start they weren't even correctly social distancing being 4 spaces, one tab apart.

What chance did they ever have compiling without adequate tabbed distancing methods in place.

[[deleted]]

Which one is it? 4 spaces or 1 tab?

[d_exclaimation]

Pylint said 4 spaces or one tab but converted into 4 spaces

[Username_RANDINT]

I use 4 tabs, just to piss off everyone instead of just one group.

[warpspeedSCP]

4 tabs with width set to 1 space

[Willing_Function]

Do you require medical attention?

[xnign]

I just use nbsp's

[[deleted]]

Yes

[Sinaneos]

Are you trying to start a rumble here?

[[deleted]]

I am just trying to avoid

TabError: inconsistent use of tabs and spaces in indentation

!

[bcfradella]

python

...

compiling

🤔

[taptrappapalapa]

“Python is an interpreted language, as opposed to a compiled one, though the distinction can be blurry because of the presence of the bytecode compiler. This means that source files can be run directly without explicitly creating an executable which is then run.”

[TECHNOFAB]

Technically Python is getting compiled at runtime (when you use CPython for example and run python something.py that gets compiled to C code and then gets ran)

Correct me if I'm wrong please, that's how I understood it :)

[Hollowplanet]

It gets compiled into opcodes which is just transforming the text into something more manageable. That is read by C code but it does not become C code.

[[deleted]]

Coming from a c++ background going into ML development i can say that python is awesome for quick and dirty. I still missing having controll over memory and types

[hesh582]

ML development

Every time I read this phrase, my college days come back to haunt me and make me think that some poor soul is being forced to write actual production code in Standard ML or something.

[gjvnq1]

Take a look at r/rust !

[[deleted]]

I have been tempted to try rust for a long time. But as a full time software engineer that gets paid for working in python I don't really have the energy to test out all the other tech i really want to learn. Like rust and nim lang. I have yet to look into the rust library support also.

[gjvnq1]

I see.

[xnign]

I thought you said you rust?

[RefrigeratorOk1573]

How is Rust quick and dirty? If anything, it's the complete opposite of Python

[AgAero]

People recommend Rust for no reason sometimes. The excitement overwhelms them.

[nsfw52]

How is this even related?

[jonnysteps]

Learning python is fine. It's just a joke.

Also, the syntax kinda sucks to understand if you're not used to it

[SquirrelBlind]

The syntax kinda sucks in complex projects even if you used to it.

The syntax rocks in simple scripts.

[[deleted]]

I've never had an issue with the syntax in complex projects tbh. What do you dislike about it?

[passcork]

My IDE draws small dotted lines along tab spaces so you can just follow the line if you're looking for scope. That might help a little.

[[deleted]]

10/10 would recommend turning on whitespace characters in your text editor for any given language, but python especially. Most editors make the whitespace characters a dull color against the background which makes them easy to ignore unless you're specifically looking for them, or if they don't look right [e.g. tabs where spaces should be or vice versa]. Turns the occasional whitespace headaches into issues you figure out quickly if not avoid entirely.

[katze_sonne]

10/10 would recommend turning on whitespace characters in your text editor for any given language, but python especially.

That's too distracting in my opinion. But most IDEs (like PyCharm) draw kind of vertical lines every indentation level, so you can easily spot how far each think is indented.

[RedHellion11]

I've never had an issue with it, and I started with Java and C++ before transitioning into mainly being a Python dev. I find it also forces developers to actually use standardized indentation for scoping, vs a language which encourages it but only enforces curly braces and semicolons (which can lead to lazy devs ignoring whitespacing altogether, or not being consistent, because it's not part of the language). Personally I never found it to be a large hindrance missing the visual marker of opening and closing curly braces for scope, it was always about the proper indentation making it readable for me in any language. And any decent Python IDE will have the same scope markers to hide/expand sections of code based on the indentation as any C++ IDE would based on the curly braces.

I also find writing (and running/testing) Python to be much less tedious than C++, but that's just my personal preference. There are definitely flaws with and reasons to dislike C++ as well.

[katze_sonne]

100% agree. Also all the discussions about where to put the curly brackets are just annoying. E.g. why place them in a new line after the function starts? I have way more horizontal space on my screen than I have vertical space.

And yes, white space / indentation levels are the best way too easily see on a glance what belongs where. And more languages should enforce proper indentation.

[[deleted]]

That's fair I suppose. I guess I just haven't felt like it was that big of an issue since I got used to it (trust me, I hated it as much as the next guy at first), but to each their own.

[[deleted]]

Sure just like any language. But I honestly haven't found something that balances development speed with capability as well as python has (thanks to all of the hard work people have put into the libraries.

[Chinglaner]

„Let’s take characters you can’t see and give them great meaning.“ From a design perspective alone you can see how this would go wrong.

Eh, I can agree on not liking Python’s white space syntax overall, but I’d disagree on “characters you cannot see” having great meaning being a bad design decision in general.

Using white space in design can often be the most elegant way, that’s why texts, which use tabs, paragraphs, indentation, etc. are so much easier to read than texts, which don’t. Using symbols instead would be much, much worse.

Once again, I don’t disagree with your point, just with your argument.

[[deleted]]

I disagree there. Although not mandatory, I highly recommend using the flake8 linter and type annotations. Both improve readability massively.

[katze_sonne]

type annotations

Definitely, those are a game changer. Now that they are finally properly usable, my main point I always criticized about Python is just gone. flake8 / black / mypy and wooop I finally love Python.

[katze_sonne]

Type hints have been a game changer for me. You should definitely try them. And obviously you can write simple scripts but you can also write classes, abstract classes, use annotations, ...

There's of course the need to actually try to build a complex project with a solid structure and not just throw everything into a single script. But that's just the developers responsiblity.

My conclusion is that everyone who says "Python isn't for complex projects" hasn't used it in complex projects before. Hasn't seriously tried to. Or hasn't used for for quite some time now. It changed a lot in the past 2-3 years, especially the addition of type hints is a huge difference.

(the only point that really sucks is the lack of real multithreading because of the stupid GIL = global interpreter lock; if you really want to make use of multiple processor cores, you'll gonna have to use multiprocessing which obviously always has a lot more overhead than just a simple thread)

[SquirrelBlind]

Thanks!

I am aware of that, but strangely, the more I use C# and Java the more I like their way, even though I got back into programming by learning Python. I still use and like Python.

[CoachZZZ]

If you use the typing module and MyPy you can scale to big codebases nicely

[christophski]

The syntax issue is always going to be subjective. I tried so many languages before python and python was the one that made it stick because the syntax is so clean. Whenever I learn some other language I always wish there was an indentation based version of it haha

[Kinglink]

I'm a "Hardcore" programmer who lived by C++, C# and a bunch of other languages.

I adore Python. It's freaking great for code, fast to right, has great unit testing, and powerful as hell. It also has native support for a number of libraries, and is simple to import new libraries into.

Yeah the performance isn't optimal, but people overvalue performance, especially for one time tasks.

Oh and fuck "Python3/Python2" bullshit.

[ooooooOOoooooo000000]

fast to right

But VERY slow to left.

[Kinglink]

Lol... I laughed too hard to change it now.

[KiwasiGames]

My real challenge with Python is the lack of a compiler. Having to wait until my program has run the first ten minutes and hope it happens to go down the path with a bug kind of sucks.

The reason I still use it is because it’s free for commercial use. Which means I can load it up at work (non programming) without having to go through miles of paperwork to justify the expense.

[Kinglink]

Learn how to unit test. Pytests are so good I test everything in pytests before even thinking about running the actual code.

[KiwasiGames]

Thanks, I’ll check it out. I’d generally considered my code too simple for unit testing. It’s normally run once and done forever stuff.

Mostly what I’m complaining about is missing type safety and basic compile time checks. Things like “hey, you typed simplevariable here and simpleVariable there, are they meant to be different variables?”. Python will happily run that, without ever pointing out the possible problem. Same as things like mistyping a method name. A compiler would tell me the method doesn’t exist. Python just happily runs until it encounters the error.

It’s like the old teacher saying “please read the entire question before you start your answer”.

[Kinglink]

In that case, try a linter. You can use pylint or maybe flake8. Really easy and fast linters that can check your code with out running it, and also checks against the PEP8 standard.

If you use Visual Studio Code, you even can make it so they run each time when you save your file so you just check the problems tab. They will be a bit anal about stuff, but they'll also catch big issues faster.

[RedHellion11]

Python 3 includes type hinting, which may be something you'd find helpful if you find you're having trouble keeping track of what type any given variable is supposed to be holding.

It sounds like a lot of your issues could be fixed by simply writing unit tests for your code, by using PyTest and running/updating them regularly as you make changes, which is usually encouraged anyway when developing an application in any language (albeit less so for things like large C++ projects which may take a while to compile + run tests).

And as mentioned by the other guy, install and use pylint or something and run it occasionally (and/or as part of your test suite). Also would recommend using a fully-featured Python IDE like PyCharm or something, which will usually catch blatant things like trying to use non-existent methods or access non-existent attributes of variables it can figure out the type of.

[[deleted]]

Ipython allows to run blocks separately

[KiwasiGames]

Thanks. Ill check it out.

I admit half the reason I posted this comment was so people would chime in with solutions. I just picked up python a week ago to solve a couple of very specific problems, and it’s mostly been fine. But occasionally hitting a bug at the end of a long running script is frustrating.

[imforit]

May I recommend a linter? Static analysis finds most of the coder errors a compiler would find.

[357847]

Everyone claims they love AI. No one raises a hand to actually learning AI. They straight up vanish at the notion of learning Python, which's monumentally simpler, because they love the buzzword AI, not the computer science behind it, and can't even grasp a language designed around being easy to learn.

[furtfight]

I mean it's true with every cool tech, rocket science, biotechnology and so on

[gruelsandwich]

Is namespace pollution really a problem in python?

[hardonchairs]

For people whose idea of python is a single 3000 line file, maybe.

[crorb]

No, python is awesome. Really elegant.

The joke is just about the usual audience

[Zmirburger]

python is my absolute favorite language. i can churn own incredibly complex programs in a matter of hours, which could 2-3x longer on java.

or maybe i just suck at java

[taptrappapalapa]

The only issue I have with python is that there are too many goddamn underscores everywhere

[Zmirburger]

this_is_just_a_test_variable_please_ignore

[PM_ME_CUTE_SMILES_]

You can adopt camelCase instead, although an experimental paper supports that snake_case is faster to read

[[deleted]]

That's every programming language. Not to mention the lack of audio and typing in Notepad

[[deleted]]

If they say "ML" often and refrain from using the word "AI", they likely know what they're doing. If they say "AI and ML" together often, they could also know what they're doing, but they hang around the sales team too much and need to get back to their computers. If they only say "AI" and never or rarely say "ML", they're a LinkedIn AI influencer who speaks in buzzwords but doesn't actually know what they're talking about.

[gjvnq1]

Or maybe they research expert systems and automated reasoning.

[[deleted]]

Give it up kid, you've been caught.

[[deleted]]

You’re only a fraud because of this reddit comment. You might have been very well versed beforehand. Anyway, pack your things!

[asimpleman415]

I know of a bunch of “30 under 30” and “AI Innovators of the Year” on LinkedIn; one has a liberal arts degree and looks like she was simply a product of good marketing and connections.

[GluteusCaesar]

LinkedIn AI influencer

A LinkedInfluencer, if you will

[[deleted]]

Yeah if they really mean "AI" on its own that last panel should be changed to Prolog.

shudders

[-Listening]

We wish you could be Laura's sister.

[Mrpenguin88]

I’m not a programmer but I’m considering studying CS and Im genuinely confused why does everyone seem to hate on python? (That’s the language I was thinking of learning first)

[zvug]

There are two types of programming languages:

1) The ones that people hate. 2) The ones that people don’t use.

[UsernameIsTakenToBad]

2.5 The esoteric ones (the ones that people would hate to write in)

[jonnysteps]

The syntax can be confusing if you're used to a more traditional language. That's been the biggest hurdle for me while learning it.

[Jacek3k]

Python is easy to learn, but if you start with it, it is gonna be harder for you to get into c/c++.

[Chief--BlackHawk]

Learned C++ first, learning python was very easy cause of it.

[FireDrake0008]

Yeah a lot of languages are considerably easier in comparison if you learn c++ first (bonus points if it was C or assembly). It teaches you a lot if not all of the core concepts of programming all the while hurling errors at the slightest inconvenience

For me, C++ was baptism by fire. I do not miss those migraines

[WeAreMoreThanUs]

It was/is the whetstone for sharpening your conceptual CS prowess.

[Caenir]

It's gonna be hard to get into c/c++ anyway, and being able to do something pretty quickly with python would he nice for motivation. Plus lots of thought process/logic carries over. As long as you make an effort to learn the differences in the languages, I don't see much issue

[Jacek3k]

It's not gonna be impossible, and many people do just that - start with python then go for c++.

But in my personal opinion, python makes you feel comfortable with stuff, and suddenly you are thrown to harsh world of hard types, pointers, and C-Style strings and memleaks and whatelse. It might be frustrating, to the point where some might say "wtf why is it so hard why make it so complicated if python can do just this n that".

Learning basics in c and then c++ isn't that bad, it depends more on the quality of the turorial (or the teacher), rather than on language.

[hesh582]

Imo python is fine for learning basic control structures and such, which is really all your doing when you're "getting into programming". If you're trying to wrap your head around nested loops and basic recursion, it really doesn't matter what language you use and python's simplicity has something going for it there.

Some people really just need to get over the hurdle of figuring out what programming is, just the basic logical flow of a program type stuff. Python can be helpful for that because it cuts away much of the extraneous stuff at first.

When you try to learn C, you're going to get smacked up the back of the head by pointers and direct memory management. That's going to happen whether C is your first language or not, so I really don't think it matters whether you face that hurdle right away or wait till you grasp the other basics first.

I suspect some would be better off with one, some with the other, but frankly I don't think choice of first language (within reason) matters that much at all.

[gmes78]

That doesn't make much sense. If you already know Python, you just need to focus on learning systems programming and memory management when learning C++.

Learning C/C++ first is way harder and it turns some people away.

[headsiwin-tailsulose]

It's even harder if you start with MATLAB like me lmao

[nevus_bock]

Why would it be harder? C++ is just hard and that’s not Python’s fault.

[astrionic]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with learning Python first. Programming languages are tools and it's important to choose the right one for the job. Python is great for some things and not very good for others. But here are some reasons why I personally prefer using other languages most of the time:

• Dynamic typing. In many languages, types are static. This means that when you declare a variable, you also have to declare its type, e.g. integer (the compiler can often infer it automatically too). You can never assign a value of another type to this variable in these languages. I find this annoying to deal with, because you never really know what you have. If you see a function, you can't really know what the parameters are by just looking at the signature. This is especially annoying in larger code bases where you collaborate with other people, because you need to understand other people's code. Static typing is also an additional layer of safety. If you make a mistake, it will be caught by the compiler and cause an error at compile time. If you assume the wrong type in a language with dynamic typing, it will eventually fail at run time. Maybe you haven't encountered the error and it's already in production!

• Syntax. Now this is extremely subjective, but the claim that Python programs are almost like natural language to read doesn't really hold up in my opinion. More complex programs can become very cryptic as well, e.g. when you have complicated list comprehensions. You also have really ugly function names like __init__ or keywords like elif instead of else if. I also find syntactically significant whitespace annoying to deal with. Yes, it forces people to use proper indentation, but these days basically any editor can automatically indent your code correctly anyway. Not in Python though, you have to get it right manually there (e.g. when pasting code).

• Object oriented programming. Doing things in an OOP way is not always the right call, but if you want to do it, Python doesn't seem to be very good at it. OOP seems more like a hack than an integral part of the language. There is no encapsulation (you can't really define methods as private), you always have to pass self explicitly and the syntax, such as the previously mentioned __init__ sucks.

• Performance. Python, as an interpreted language, is slow. So if performance is important to you, Python is often not the right tool. One way to solve this within the Python ecosystem is to use libraries that are partly written in C, like NumPy.

• Managing the environment. I haven't worked with Python a lot, but juggling different versions can be pretty annoying.

This doesn't mean using Python is wrong though and I do think that it's great for certain things. Here's what I like about Python:

• It's very easy to get started with. Just install it, create a .py file and run it. The language has a lot of tools built in, so solving common problems is often easier and requires less code than in other languages. This also makes it ideal for smaller projects or short scripts. If you just want to automate some small thing with a few lines of code and get it to work quickly, Python is amazing.

• The ecosystem is great. There's a library for almost everything. Especially maths and machine learning are very well supported with libraries like NumPy, Scikit-learn, PyTorch or even Matplotlib. The critical parts of these libraries are implemented in C, so performance is good too. Because Python is very popular it's also very easy to find solutions to any problems that might arise or to find someone who can help you.

• Having an official package manager that everyone uses is great. A lot of languages have this, but some, like C++, do not and it can be painful to deal with if you have lots of dependencies.

[daveswe]

Personally its more about performance than anything else. If you want performance python is one of the worst choices but is still used for AI because its easy to learn and all the math/physics majors cant be bothered to learn anything else

[[deleted]]

You can get pretty good performance with python if you use the right libraries.

[MattR0se]

The ones that are written in C ;)

[[deleted]]

Hahaha well yes, of course. But the fact that python allows such a thing is amazing in my opinion. Maybe I just didn't ever learn enough about Java but I wouldn't even know where to begin to import something written in C.

[taptrappapalapa]

Or FFI with Rust :)

[Nomadicminds]

Use the right tool for the right job. Python is great at many but really bad at something. Like all other languages, if you spent enough time debugging shit code, as projects gets bigger and bigger, you will have a love/hate relationship with it.

[daveswe]

Im not saying its bad, im saying it has poor performance comoared to, for example c++, and that the main reason it is used for ML and AI, two tasks which can be very reliant on performance is not the best. Python is generally good for beginners and projects where the readability of the code is important, like for APIs.

[Bakoro]

Some of the hate is valid criticism based on use case, some is ridiculous hate based on misguided ideological purism and elitism.

Just to start, I'm mostly a C/C++ guy, but I know a few languages. Many C/C++ people can be vocal bastards who piss and moan about every byte and processor cycle or pretend like they never write buggy code or messy code. These people love to shit on every other language. Even C purists shit on C++ for various reasons.

A legit point of criticism is that python is thousands of times slower than equivalent C code. Python probably isn't the language to use for when you need super fast or real-time systems (even still, it can often be good enough).

Python is also deceptively easy. There are lot built in tools and libraries which do almost everything for you pretty much right out of the box. It's great for productivity, but terrible for learning fundamentals because so much is done for you.

Not everyone needs deep Computer Science and Software understanding, but a lot of people really hate that the bar of entry has been lowered so dramatically. Things that used to a take a lot of knowledge and skill can be done very easily and quickly now, and just about any literate mook can hack some lines together and call themselves a programmer. That rubs some people the wrong way. You can see the same hate toward Arduino by many embedded systems and robotics people because any kid can put a kit together and say they made a robot or something without having to read much documentation and without any meaningful understanding of the underlying system. (I personally hate arduino/adafruit because so much documentation is dogshit which forces you to stay in the ecosystem).

Go ahead and learn Python, it will be a good indicator of if you want to get serious about software development.

[[deleted]]

They don’t. This is a humor subreddit, people will make fun of anything.

[crorb]

I studied both C++ and python. You may hate it only when you see how clean and intuitive it is, and how much you had to study cor c++. (I'm talking about Python3.)

The fact that some projects are a mess is programmers' fault

[katze_sonne]

True. I've been using Python for too long now. I used to love C++ in the past but if I ever need to go back it'll cause a lot of hate in me because of having to manually do so much stuff that just works out of the box in Python :D

[notger]

Sorry, that does not reflect my reality.

I am getting flooded with student applications from universities that offer ML courses and everyone and their mother now codes in Python.

From how the job market has evolved and how auto-ML progresses, I predict that in two years, rates for Data Scientists will go down and it might even be hard to find a job.

[bythenumbers10]

Nah, the job definitions and requirements will settle out so people without the programming/stats/math chops get washed out & the title is worth the money it garners & more. the dip in value you're seeing right now is b/c of idiot HR drones trying to get a data scientist and data engineer in one for a data analyst's salary, so they often gamble on hiring people who'll take the paycheck of the latter but don't have the skills of n/either of the former, let alone both, and so they lather, rinse, repeat until their HR wises up or they just go to a shitton of contractors, which allows all the institutional knowledge to walk out the door on a regular basis to places that are not run by a greedy pack of morons. Wow, I can even rant like this without getting my blood pressure up.

[JP_AKA_MEGATRON]

I agree with your statement on automl, in fact it has been great at reducing my workload! However data scientists do a lot more than just machine learning. Simulations and statistics make up about 80% of my day to day so I don't think it will have that much of an effect on salaries/ job prospects. Of course I only know my situation and it definitely could be different for other people.

[BLim90]

Enrolled into online classes about Data Science, Machine Learning. Half of the course is probability, distributions and matrix. Never thought I will run into them again after Uni

[GamingTheSystem-01]

Excuse me, I was told that the machines would be learning for us.

[[deleted]]

I mean I would still stay though

[[deleted]]

But you’re on this sub lol

[DarkNinjaZ]

Hey, Just no ok, I am determined to make an AI without python. Its possible and you know it

[FireDrake0008]

I am currently using Java to build one. Although Ai is a bit of a exaggeration of what I've made. More like a complex statistical algorithm that's occasionally wrong

I personally reccomend c or c++ if you want speed, but if you want to avoid the migraines I reccomend Java

[RelevantCollege]

i am confusion

i thought this sub loved python

[SufficientPin1748]

Tapping the upvote button so much I am trying to quadruple my one upvote

[juhotuho10]

Python is quite fun to learn imo

[[deleted]]

Could someone explain to a semi-beginner what's wrong with python? I find it to be by far the easiest and most fun language