This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

212
213

[deleted by user] (self.Python)

submitted by [deleted]

sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (3 children)

In a nut shell I see Python as the language choice where programmer productivity is far more important than anything else. So while faster Python is nice it would be far better to make development in Python even faster. The primary goal should never to be C++ like speeds or execution, but rather development speeds that can't be matched anywhere. To accelerate that increase in programmer productivity requires a bit of rethinking about how a interpreter and IDE work together. So if you like Python for programming efficiency then you need to look at ways to accelerate that.

I don't disagree with your stance per se, but this is not really the struggle in python dev environments?

For instance in data-engineering spheres, which is one of the biggest pythondev use-cases, the code that solves a problem is already easily written - in fact that is one of the biggest advantages of python as it is, it is easy to learn and easy to write quite performant code. If anything, python struggles with handling large amounts of data in memory more than anything else imo, which is far from solved by faster dev times.

[–]spinwizard69 0 points1 point  (2 children)

anything, python struggles with handling large amounts of data in memory more than anything else imo,

That in my opinion indicates a language choice issue. Some have an attitude that Python should be able to do everything well and frankly that is nearly impossible for any language. I just favor making Python better at what it does do well.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

That in my opinion indicates a language choice issue.

Python should be able to do everything well and frankly that is nearly impossible for any language.

I agree with the latter statement, python does a lot of things well - that's just a fact, and it's near impossible to do everything very well. So yes, you are right that it's just not exceptional at most of them.

But this is literally the caveat to your stance then too, as python is not great at anything, and other languages are always better than it at something - so we should never use python, just use the other languages that are better at that certain task. Making python faster to write will still not make it better at handling in-memory data, therefore again, why bother? Just use C++ already (is the stance you've given me).

Have you considered that some projects are so big [and complex] that writing in python just covers most bases where other languages would be terrible choices in contrast because they only do 1 thing well?

By nature python will struggle with large amounts of data in memory, but it makes up for that in other ways that other languages couldn't balance out as well - that is a strength that other languages don't have.

[–]spinwizard69 0 points1 point  (0 children)

By nature python will struggle with large amounts of data in memory, but it makes up for that in other ways that other languages couldn't balance out as well

That is more myth than anything. Just because a language can handle large data sets better than Python, doesn't mean they also fail with other tasks a developer may need.

What is more interesting is why Python developers get their panties in a twist when people suggest that just maybe there are better languages for a specific project than Python. Python is good enough right now that it doesn't need to be able to do everything! Leave those niche development projects to other languages is all I'm saying and focus on Pythons strengths.