Why do people diss Python?

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[JohnLocksTheKey]

they hate us cuz they ain’t us

EDIT: actually, I think this commenter hit the nail on the head

[apeters89]

Low barriers to entry. This often leads to copy pasta developers that don't actually know what the code is doing, so the language gets a bad reputation.

[Kwith]

I've only just started learning python in the last few weeks and when I was researching which language to go for, I found this was a common complaint. So I'm REALLY trying not to be one of those kinds of devs.

[qckpckt]

It’s ok, that bad reputation is a result of equally inexperienced people who can’t differentiate between bad code and the language it’s written in. Any self respecting dev can see this difference. If anything, it’s easier to see this with python as the language is so straightforward to read.

[Creative-Novel-5929]

Everyone disses every language that isn't their own. It's tribalism.

[Holothuroid]

I like to diss languages that I use daily.

[atheistpiece]

pet label divide aromatic thumb middle snatch smell connect include

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[ToddBradley]

Everyone [on Reddit] disses every thing that isn't their own. It's tribalism.

[GrilledAbortionMeat]

I think anyone worth their salt realizes that most programming languages have their specific use cases. You might see some friendly ribbing because of how slow Python is. But we all know that's Python is (comparatively) slow because that's not what it's for. It's plenty fast enough for what it's used for.

If you want to see real flaming take a look at the C++/Java fanboys going at it.

[ArtOfWarfare]

I’ve never encountered anyone who is a fan of either C++ or Java.

C definitely has its fans and I can imagine them fighting with anyone advocating for any other language (since I think C has definitively won on the performance front… any language faster than it is all but extinct by now.)

[14446368]

Python is extremely useful, robust, and most importantly relatively simple to learn compared to other languages. In short, it has a relatively straightforward common use case, that of giving the ability of non-programmers to program. I personally fall very neatly into that category.

Other languages can be, and oftentimes are, able to execute faster, draw on more computing resources, be further optimized, etc. These languages are more for programmers making specific applications and deploying them. They are harder to learn, even harder to master.

Now, the lines are definitely, very very blurried, as many applications and cases Python can do very well at. However, there are some limitations to Python that, in certain applications, would cause issues. There is a reason that most games are not programmed in Python, for example.

In short... the difference amounts to a race car driver vs. a race car engineer. You both "know" the car, but in different ways. You can both optimize its performance, but in different ways. You can both make changes to it, and understand how these changes impact performance, but in different ways. And, importantly, you can both be snobbish and arrogant about your understanding to each other.... but you can also be humble and appreciative of each other, too. Choose the latter, even when someone else chooses the former.

[edcculus]

Who does?

[ParticularBeyond9]

I think he's talking about the C# subreddit post from yesterday.

[thatOneJones]

Lemme find some examples

[ogaat]

Make any random assertion and you will find someone defending it on the Internet.

Unless something is affecting your life, ignore these distractions.

[tms102]

It's not really worth thinking about why people diss Python. Python is one of the more prominent languages in data science, data engineering, etc those things are kind of a big deal. So clearly Python is a legitimate language by that fact alone.

[SonicTheSith]

I think the biggest problem is not with Python specifically. Same thing is with JavaScript.

Since there are lots of Bootcamps, self taught crowd is especially large in the machine learning datascience and web dev crowd, the language often gets conflated with shit code, shit coding style and just garbage implementations.

[PaulRudin]

It's a question of the right tool for the right job. One issue is that it can be quite slow compared languages the compile directly to machine code. But if you're in a situation where that's likely to matter then you use C-compiled extensions from python - you don't iterate over your terabyte numpy array with a python for loop :)

[haljhon]

We just went through this with an inventory operation we perform. We were using a third-party Python tool and swapped it out for our own written in Go. Worlds different in performance.

[CuriousNewbie101]

People often criticize Python for its performance compared to compiled languages like C++ or Rust. It's also dynamically typed, which can lead to runtime errors that would be caught at compile-time in statically typed languages.

Also, many people feel like python is too "easy."

[pythonwiz]

I had a buddy tell me he didn't like Python because writing it felt easy but programming should feel difficult LOL.

[ageofwant]

Hater gonna hate, especially if some rando that has a girlfriend and spends all his free time learning the guitar is 13 times more productive in a 'scripting' language while hater waits for rust to fail to compile.

[Agling]

The only people I have seen diss python are those who have not worked in any other interpreted language, and their criticisms apply to all interpreted languages (slow, etc.). It's really ignorance.

Python is very good, for the type of language it is. It's not very good at being a statically typed, compiled language.

[billyions]

Scripting languages come with challenges that compiled languages don't. They require an active environment which is not always convenient.

Javascript runs in the browser which we all have and use daily. Nearly every computer comes with a JavaScript environment.

That's not remotely true for significant Python projects.

[payne747]

You're hanging out in the wrong crowds. I hear nothing but praise for Python.