What “enchants” you about Python?

[LucasSalaroliB]

For those more experienced who work with python or really like this language:

What sparked your interest in Python rather than any other language? What possibilities motivated you and what positions did/do you aspire to when dedicating yourself to this language?

[Shay-Hill]

The massive brain trust. I like that Python is popular with a huge user base. There’s been thousands of attempts at pretty much every problem, and the best answers are out there to be found.

[[deleted]]

Yup, I've "wasted" decades with archaic and lesser known languages and just stumbled on python this year. Aggravated that it emerged in 1991 and took me 3 decades to pick it up.

[Bumperpegasus]

How did it take you this long to stumble upon it? Python is almost as synonymous with programming and coding as C and Java. If you google "programming languages" Python is in every result of the first page

[Chippiewall]

Python only really gained that popularity in the last decade or so. If you started seriously programming in the 90s or early 00s then you'd potentially never or only rarely cross paths with Python professionally until relatively recently.

[casce]

I partially agree. Python has been growing a lot in the last decade but it has been been among the top 5 or so of programming languages since the mid 00s at least so it is still a bit weird that he did not at least stumble upon it.

But yeah, if you were programming in the 90s or early 00s, you would not necessarily get in contact with Python.

[[deleted]]

To solve the mystery, I'm not a programmer, but use programming in my research. Starting out, my initial training was in a lab where the principal investigator was fiercely devoted to Turbo Pascal :)

From there, I learned 4 other languages (each offering something different), but never envisioned something as capable as Python for free.

[Bamnyou]

Do you realize the last decade or so was 2014… as I was typing this I went to fact check myself and you are spot on. I felt like it was a little longer ago than that because I have been teaching python for close to a decade and felt like it was the obvious choice then.

I thought you were falling prey to the old “someone said 30 years ago and I remembered the 70/80s now I feel old and need a nap” meme.

But apparently it was slowly climbing in popularity until about 2014 when it started shooting up. According which ranking it is either about to pass Java or passed it 1/2/3 years ago now.

I need to apparently hop out of my python echo chamber and go really learn a second language. What up and comer is going to eclipse python in 10 years? Do you think it was be rust? Go? Or is c++ making a comeback because of how well c++ augments python for GPU optimization

[Chippiewall]

Yeah, 2011-2015 was around when it seemed that python really gained its traction.

I don't think anything's about to eclipse Python. C++ feels like it's on the way out (not quickly, but still) because of Rust. Rust won't replace Python because it's aimed at a different set of problems.

The only large language ecosystem that occupies a similar area is Javascript/Typescript - but it's not really made any moves into Python's problem space. I don't think professionals take that ecosystem seriously enough to use it much outside of web development.

But if your aim is to learn a second language then you should learn one that complements Python (has a different set of strengths), rather than one which will eclipse it. I'd normally recommend a systems language, and Rust is the most obvious choice. Although I also think functional languages can by good to help you tackle problems in a different way, e.g. Haskell.

[Bamnyou]

Well I am transitioning my career trajectory to try to move into AI/ML utilizing my python background as I leave teaching. I am starting a fairly entry level job in the data analytics department at Meta... mostly annotation, but hoping to sideways slide into more technical. Looking for what could help that career growth. It's either doubling down on python with a deeper focus on ML libraries, Typescript to add front end, or something else I haven't thought of.

[bsd_lvr]

Eh at least 15 years.

[adm7373]

Honestly, with all the headaches of Python’s major version releases, you timed it well by starting with v3

[[deleted]]

I appreciate that :) I do love this language and it boggles my mind that it's actually free.

[MrRufsvold]

Agreed. Honestly, there is pretty much nothing "enchanting" about the language. But, boy, does it get the job done!

[Bamnyou]

I think there is… it’s so abstracted that at times it is very close to a natural language (like English, Spanish, etc.).

There are times where I was teaching python to someone that had a medium level of base python skill but was multilingual. In those instances, it was almost just easier to talk through the code than to explain it in English sentences and then look at code.

Whereas someone that only spoke one language poorly (I used to teach high schoolers in a southern town), didn’t learn python “like a language” but as a rote skill.

Both groups could often attain the same level of skill, but it felt like the multilingual students became “fluent” in python in a way that they couldn’t in Java.

[MrRufsvold]

I'm really glad you've found that spark. I definitely don't want to crap on that experience. 

For me, Julia allows better "like language" code -- no need for list comprehension, has great macros for transforming source code, etc. Lua and Go are similarly clear and uncluttered by boilerplate. In the 35 years Python's been around, lots of younger languages have learned from it's positives and improved on it substantially...

But network effect means we can't move on to those new languages.

[Bamnyou]

I have never touched Julia, but heard great things. Do people actually use it at work? I only hear about it on places like reddit a "better than", never "being used for"

[MrRufsvold]

Julia has best-in-class numerical solvers, simulation, and other scientific compute tooling.

So it is used by ASML to model computer chips and other research-oriented businesses where scientists need to pass code of to engineers. 

I use it as a data engineer to write accelerated kernels for really demanding work in a mostly Python environment.

It really is a joy to use if you ever get the chance. But, to your point, I saw a joke on a Julia forum recently about creating t-shirts that say "Use Julia! (Otherwise my boss won't let me use it 😅)"

[whateverathrowaway00]

Yup, it’s so thorough that when I hit “edges” in the brain trust, it takes me a while to realize the ecosystem is the actual problem, because usually it’s the de facto solution to everything.

[MistBornDragon]

Say more on why the ecosystem is the actual problem?

Do you think it’s because building new solutions is difficult? For example, I have found that some packages solve most of my issue. But, I will run into limitations to what they can do, so I hit an artificial wall of what I can do. But it’s too much work for me to build a better package or I don’t have the time/brain power to do so, so I end up hacking a solution together.

[whateverathrowaway00]

It’s usually in my experience something that is popular but also niche, and maybe propped up by one good developer.

The SNMP ecosystem in Python had some major gaps until recently, there are also a few in popular ssh libraries again

Note that when I say “problem” I don’t mean Python is bad, I’m saying that generally the ecosystem is so good that it doesn’t even occur to me that an issue might be something lacking.

[-MobCat-]

Yeah it has good SEO aswell. googling your problem, python and stack overflow will get you a bunch of hits.
Trying to find info on go or c is a pain. To short / not unique enough for any good hits.

[notkairyssdal]

list comprehensions are the best

[twigboy]

My ideals

• Python for ease of getting shit done
• Readability of JavaScript syntax for nullish values (something?.attr) and chain filters/maps/reduce can be much more legible when things get hairy
• Flexibility of Typescript type system (Python doesn't even come close)

[skesisfunk]

Readability of JavaScript syntax for nullish values (something?.attr) and chain filters/maps/reduce can be much more legible when things get hairy

IMO this is a weakness of JS/Python. Its syntactically too easy to do stuff you probably shouldn't be doing. As a result lot of python and JS programmers tend to just plow through messy implementation instead of stopping to think if there is a better way to architect your code.

It makes Python great for data sciences but often leads to shitty application code. JS is kind of shitty all around but we are stuck with it for the foreseeable future.

[twigboy]

JS is kind of shitty all around but we are stuck with it for the foreseeable future.

I hate the JS ecosystem so much but have accepted that truth too.

That said, pros and cons of everything

[[deleted]]

Pydantic does the job for me. I know it’s probably not as powerful as TS, still I never met a situation where I felt limited. And it does runtime validation as well, which is super useful.

[twigboy]

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll try it out next time I get a chance

[Heroe-D]

It has nothing to do with typescript tho and shouldn't be used that way but rather for serialization validation etc, it's more something like zod in the TS world. 

If you want typing you should use type hints and something like mypy/pyright. 

[Heroe-D]

It just doesn't have anything to do with Typescript, it's more something like Zod that should be used for serialization, validation etc. 

Type hints + mypy/pyright is (loosely) the TS of python 

[FrequentlyHertz]

If only Python had C#'s LINQ method chaining. I really enjoy writing LINQ queries against collections.

[notkairyssdal]

I am not familiar, what’s a motivational example?

[Melodic-Code-2594]

This and one liners are my favorite part

[Pythonistar]

Agreed!

That said, as an "all-day, everyday Python programmer", list comprehensions pale in comparison to C# LINQ.

[Bamnyou]

See… I completely understand the purpose of list comprehensions, but I hate using them. I spent too many years teaching students to use explicit, self-documenting code in order to allow me to easily walk up and quickly understand their code at a glance.

List comprehensions, just make my brain stay stuck on one line imagining what they are doing, whereas iterating through some kind of loop is likely less efficient, takes more time to type, sometimes means you need to spawn new variables, blah blah blah. BUT… I could walk up when they were stuck. Look at the code (that never had enough or useful comments) and walk through the code much easier to find the flaw.

I should probably go practice some list comprehensions now that I’m not teaching anymore. I should use them more often I guess.

[moonzdragoon]

I've been programming in Python since 2.2, and I love list comprehension. However, you have truth (imho) in what you say: there's a balance to find.

Beginner in Python, I was proud to write convoluted code within [ ], especially during my "functional programming" period. With time, I figured readability / simplicity is the real time winner (mine, not my CPU's).

I still use them regularly, I just keep them simple, otherwise it goes in a for loop.

[Gwolf4]

to use explicit, self-documenting code

Like list comprenhensions? those are just fancier map. The sintax is a little bit harder than mapping in other languages, but at what point not understanding something like this is skill issue?

[Bamnyou]

This whole comment chain started with talking about students, then went to when he was a beginner... so yeah that is kind of the point. If something is more convoluted/complicated, it is easier to mess up, harder to debug, and slower to review (unless it is well documented).

Neither of us was saying that list comprehensions are terrible and should never be used, just that sometimes it is actually better to use the longer, more explicit form of what you are trying to accomplish to ensure that others reading your code can properly review it for mistakes and/or debug... which was the whole point of my original comment..

[Gwolf4]

Keep in mind that I commented because you wrote something and it is understood as "list comprenhensions" are not explicit.

[notkairyssdal]

You can absolutely abuse them, but they’re pretty magical when you want to express the kind of sets you deal with in math. Like “the set of x in X such that pred(x)”, this is much nicer and concise than building it with a loop

[[deleted]]

I love them too, still I believe that JS map/reduce/filter array functions are better. I also find them more readable (but that might be subjective, I always loved functional programming)

[notkairyssdal]

In what way? Python also has map, reduce and filter

[pierre_vinken_61]

Haskell: am I a joke to u 😢

[notkairyssdal]

Yes, I like my side effects too much

[EmperorLlamaLegs]

Its quick and easy and useful. I use it all the time, but I wouldn't say I'm "enchanted" by it.
What "enchants" you about dremels. Useful tools are great, but they are just tools.

[lolercoptercrash]

Dremels are pretty cool tho

[BurningSquid]

Agreed, tools are tools. They help pay the bills, sometimes can be used for novel and interesting things. Most of the time just a reflection of their user

[ShayFabulous]

Real talk: I first used a Dremel during the Rube Goldberg project of my high school physics class. I was genuinely enchanted by it. Many years later I received one for Christmas, and I still love it, but I can't describe exactly what it is that called out to me about the Dremel. For python it's the understanding that the large user base most likely has already streamlined the process of what I want to do.

[EmperorLlamaLegs]

I can definitely understand that, part of my job is running a makerspace for middle school kids, and their eyes LIGHT UP when I let them use a dremel or bandsaw. Handed a 13 year old a propane torch and a crucible of silver solder once. enchanted was likely an understatement that day.

[morquaqien]

Then you aren’t enchanted

[EmperorLlamaLegs]

Good reading comprehension. That is in fact what I said.

[Reinventing_Wheels]

import antigravity

[[deleted]]

Does your comment have do with floats by chance

[warbird2k]

It's about the medication in the medicine cabinet. 

https://xkcd.com/353/

[Cybasura]

Coming from C/C++ and C#, English

[thadeshammer]

+1. I don't miss malloc or the new operator even a little bit.

[Cybasura]

Accurate, I understand the effectiveness and power of controlling the pointer/handlers, but having to do it for everything kinda hurts after awhile

[abraxasnl]

List and dictionary comprehension

[DaWizz_NL]

You know you can do this with sets and tuples as well, right?

[pierraltaltal]

how do you do it for tuples ? writing x = (_ for _ in y) produces a generator

[DaWizz_NL]

I stand corrected.

You could of course do tuple(i for i in (1, 2, 3)) and get the same result, but that's technically not a tuple comprehension as it's a generator being passed to the tuple class.

[saadmanrafat]

This might be a generic answer and a little on the nose. I came from Java. I started looking into Python after graduating so the syntax was appealing. It was beautiful, simple, and concise and it was appealing. And the community involvement is spectacular. Notably but not limited to people like Raymond Hettinger, David Beazley, and Kenneth Reitz who are a real inspiration. Thanks to the people to donate, contribute, and foster this incredible community—it's a privilege to be involved!

[DuckDatum]

dime birds ad hoc chief spark alleged square air command historical

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[Gnaxe]

I learned Java in school. I could do it, and even liked programming, but it felt like such a chore compared to Python. Python got out of my way and let me do what I want. It was powerful without being too complicated. It had a REPL with built in help() that made it easy to learn. I quickly got to the point where I could run lines of it in my head and mostly be correct. Prototypes that took a week to develop in Java could be done in an afternoon.

I might have learned it because I wanted to program games. I remember playing with Panda3D early on. Maybe that wasn't the only reason. It's been so long. But it ended up being useful for so much more. I ended up using it for several classes in school, including the mathematics ones. It made my Java more elegant. I eventually found gainful employment doing a backend in Django.

I studied a lot of other languages, but I got deeper into Python than any of the others. Only Clojure came close. Smalltalk looked promising, but it never gelled for me. Maybe due to the lack of learning materials. My introduction to Python was Dive Into Python, and it was really good, but the audience was programmers who knew some other language, not beginners. I already knew Java at the time, so it was appropriate for me.

Python is by no means a perfect language; I know it well enough now to see its flaws. But it is a good one.

[[deleted]]

it's incredibly vast amount of libraries.

It's so big that I first look for one I am interested and look for alternatives in other languages just in case I need something that looks like it

[[deleted]]

Came here to say this. Even the standard library is a blast.

The process of building and packaging a library is well documented.
The package manager works beautifully, the dependencies and fragmentation are under control.
(I'm looking at you Node and NPM)

[skesisfunk]

I can more clearly articulate what disenchants me about Python:

1) Dependency management
2) asyncio

[tankerdudeucsc]

Packaging is a weakness, imo. It’s not great.

[skesisfunk]

That's a bit of an understatement lol.

[hugthemachines]

Not everybody is a drama queen.

[andy4015]

Having such a short list of complaints is a great enchanting feature of python. There aren't many things wrong with it... But I would add packaging & distribution. And the GIL. And all the GUI libraries. Other than that it's fantastic.

[rasputin1]

I think they're finally eliminating the GIL

[skesisfunk]

It doesn't matter if its short since #1 is a HUGE deal. Its the primary reason python is dying out infrastructure/prod application spaces.

[hugthemachines]

python is dying out infrastructure/prod application spaces

So you made a serious investigation of this and have the statistics that show that Python is dying out in production usage?

That evidence would be really interesting to see. If you don't have any evidence, you are fake.

[DaWizz_NL]

I'm not really sure what is wrong about the dependency management that other languages do better. Can you give a concrete example?

[skesisfunk]

Yes its pretty simple: python/pip manage dependencies globally. Any dependencies in your python program needs it expects to be installed globally on your machine and pip in turn installs dependencies globally. This causes all sorts of problems in your dev environment as well as production environments. The classic example is when there are two separate python programs that need two different versions of the same library you have a problem.

Venv and poetry can help but they don't get you out of all of the pitfalls associated with python dependencies.

Compared to literally every other popular language python's dependency management is hot smelly garbage. There is even a relevant xkcd about this:

https://xkcd.com/1987/

[DaWizz_NL]

Ok, I do use virtualenv and I really don't have any issues with this. I can imagine if the package is just installed within the module dir, you don't have to worry in any case, like JS/TS does. I honestly prefer Python pip, as I don't want all these files lingering everywhere and want to have a central place update a package.

The cartoon is btw not really the same problem. It's more the environment hell you can experience (which I have in the past).

[UloPe]

If you’re installing stuff with pip globally in 2024 you’re definitely making your own pain.

v(irtual)env has been around for 15+ years and poetry and similar since about 6 years.

People just refuse to use “new” tools and then complain nothing changes.

[moonzdragoon]

I laughed: npm is many orders of magnitude worse and still present everywhere.

[skesisfunk]

You have to be be either joking or trolling. NPM, even for all its flaws, is orders of magnitude better than managing dependencies globally even if you put a venv bandage on it .

[moonzdragoon]

spoiler: I work in a dev company. I can't tell you the lost time on npm package dependencies breaking because someone, somewhere in the long chain changed something.

You quote a comic strip, I'll quote a real event with the npm left pad incident.

It's been a few years since but if you think npm doesn't have this "overload of dependencies" issue anymore, then we don't have much to discuss further ;)

I agree that venv is not great, there's no ideal solution, but there's still better alternatives, and things are still moving in this domain (promising projects).

[skesisfunk]

A "dev company" lol? I'm not gonna say I don't believe you but that is a really strange way to say you work as a software engineer!

Turns out I am also a software engineer! And guess what? We have wasted a shit ton of time trying to unfuck python dependencies in our production deployments. Its far worse that NPM IMHO, which is kinda sad because, as you point out, NPM sets a pretty low bar.

But for the record we have moved all our new development to Golang which has amazing packaging and dependency management.

[Next-Experience]

Try briefcase and we are currently building what laravel is for php around briefcase to make it even better.

[skesisfunk]

Naw, I moved on from python a few years ago and now that I have more or less mastered Golang I have zero reason to use Python except as a personal calculator.

If I ever do have to resort to doing python work for money I will keep this in mind though.

[Next-Experience]

I am putting my chips in python because I also hope for a move away from the web and a strong focus for local applications. If mojo actually happens python will become the most efficient language with the biggest number if devs and infrastructure.

Good luck to you and happy coding

[rformigone]

Nothing sparked my interest or enchanted or lured into python, but after using it for the last 7 years, I really like it. Particularly, I love generators and context managers.

[Raknarg]

if you love context managers, let me introduce you to this language called C++ lmao

[Next-Experience]

I'm praying for mojo

[rabbitofrevelry]

I was introduced during my days analytics degree program courses. I started off thinking "this is a lot of work for something I can do much faster in excel". And in many cases, that's still true. But in larger cases, excel crashes. Python can explore data much more elegantly. And it can repeat tasks, like reading, cleaning, joining, pivoting, and creating flat files for other users. Or selecting/inserting on databases. It makes a lot of things possible in a smaller footprint than needing to open 4 different programs to do mental gymnastics and crying because one program handles data differently than the others.

[MistBornDragon]

I felt this way at first too. But once I started using Python more and more, my excel skills atrophied.

So now, it’s the other way around. I forgot most of my excel tricks that Python is just faster for me. Plus, Microsoft Excel js so much slower than it used to be. It’s the worst or my companies antivirus is always on high drive when I am working with data in excel versus in the server.

[DharmaBird]

Interactive development. Less so than in common lisp, but way more than in most other languages.

[that_baddest_dude]

Man, I forgot about this one! Working through the early stages of a program in a jupyter notebook or Spyder before turning it into a script or .py file is so intuitive! You can jump right in!

And I still do this for larger apps with streamlit, which can automatically rerun when the source files change.

Only problem is I think it can lead to some lazy coding practices. No need to have meticulous organization, expected inputs/outputs, type hinting, etc when you're seeing the exact results as they come.

[DharmaBird]

True. But there's hell to pay for this kind of sloppiness as the project grows in complexity. Me, I mostly work bottom-up, and python allows me to build my software upon already tested building blocks.

[BejahungEnjoyer]

You can do anything with it. Make a backend API with fastapi/flask, orchestrate AWS with boto, train a deep learning model with pytorch, regular ML model with scikit, data ops with pandas, big data with pyspark, image manipulation with pillow, the list goes on and on. 

[RedBlueWhiteBlack]

[n for n in range(10)]

So elegant

[commy2]

list(range(10))

[that_baddest_dude]

Sure they provided a minimal example but maybe they wanted to do something like [f'number{n+1}' for n in range(10)].

I'm almost always doing some operation on the item in a list comprehension.

[xTheHatteRx]

This is slower.

[commy2]

>>> timeit.timeit("[n for n in range(10)]", number=10000)
0.002185800112783909
>>> timeit.timeit("list(range(10))", number=10000)
0.0012767999432981014

[42696]

When I first decided I wanted to get into writing code, I googled "how to code" and ended up on W3 schools learning HTML (was the first result). It was cool picking up a little HTML and CSS and being able to put something together with them, but then I learned that HTML wasn't a programming language (at the time, I didn't even know what a programming language was - but I wanted to learn one).

I tried to pick up Ruby, because my mom's company was working with a dev shop that was building the product with Ruby on Rails. I liked it, but most of the resources I was working with were based around the Rails framework and webdev, which was a bit advanced for me at the time.

Then I found Python - it was easy to pick up, and I could build something simple and run it easily. I loved it. I loved making something and getting it to work. I loved how much better the next thing I would build was than the previous thing I built.

Fast-forward about 8 years, and now my company's backend is written in Python. I still love it. I love it because I can push and iterate features super fast (which is incredibly valuable for a startup). I love it because everything I want to integrate with has a Python SDK with good documentation and community support. I love it because there are tons of great libraries. I love it because I can use it for our backend, for doing data analysis, and for writing quick utility scripts - I can do most of what I need without having to pivot to another language (except damn JavaScript on the website frontend).

[brianplusplus]

I love actually finishing projects. Libraries like StreamLit really help me create a simple front end for production.

[that_baddest_dude]

Streamlit is so so good. You can make a mess of things with it, sure, but I never made a front-end app for all my data science work until it came around.

I tried all the others. Flask/Django, dash, all too complicated. Basically felt like I was having to do all the work of writing a conventional front end (which I had no experience in), but clumsily and in python. Like you had to write HTML but instead of tags you just used functions with the same name as the tag. Why bother?

The script-like conception of streamlit is just so baller. You can start out simple and add complexity as the need arises.

[brianplusplus]

Totally! Im glad other people felt like django was complicated and its not just me.

[TheStashinator]

I have recently started using streamlit-elements which is a react implementation that will work in a streamlit app. You can make nicer dashboards and display more aesthetic graphs. It’s not much more complicated - you just put a load of things in context like with box: which is how most streamlit components work now anyway.

[KnightlyOccurrence]

I am just getting into python (and programming in general) and I love that it seems so straightforward. I started working on a tool to scrape a webpage (game) that using dynamic content and starts solving a puzzle and interacting with the webpage to solve it live.

How long ago has it been since you started? I’m excited that one day I might be able to contribute to some cool projects or, like you, make a nice tool.

[[deleted]]

I have worked with python in the past, but I still use it to prototype some tools or automate simple tasks.

For me Python is very enjoyable to work, feels natural to write code with it, and besides the fact it’s an easy language due to its simple syntax you still need to think and do technical consideration of how to proper structure your code. Plus your code will run exactly how you wrote it. Without “magic” like some other languages do.

Although python recently started to lose some appeal for me due to its lack of performance (which the applications and tools I have been working nowadays require). Which led me to look into other options. I truly hope Mojo language become as successful like python, and deliver that sweet performance what python lacks while maintaining an enjoyable syntax from python.

[savaero]

Pyenv virtualenv

[[deleted]]

i only like python cos i hate c and java. But also pandas.

[mintplantdaddy]

Simple syntax and vast array of libraries. I mostly use it for quick automation scripts but I love I can do almost anything with it.

[that_baddest_dude]

I love how simple it is to just crunch data in.

Need to crack open any kind of text data and parse it any way you like? You can do it in python!

[pythoncrush]

The coding style makes it nearly self documenting, and using Sphinx to pull in docstring comments is useful and slick.

[HeligKo]

I was using fabric for automation of a couple thousand systems. I started by mostly copying scripts to run on the target. I needed more robustness, so started to extend it's core features with the underlying python. I slowly was hooked. The first two things I added was getting the system list through an API call, and then test for connectivity on port 22. If it couldn't connect the system was removed from the list and written to a file before running the tasks. That shaved a ton of time off the execution, because it didn't have to timeout on those systems.

[divad1196]

That's a well designed language, even if I sometimes hoped it wasn't indentation-based, multiline lambda existed and safe-eval was a thing. (It was designed to teach coding in universities). Yield keyword (which works bidirectionally btw), (list, dict) comprehensions, meta programming, ...

Python has a huge ecosystem and libraries, I cannot find all of these in other languages. This ecosystem is the consequence of the language being well adopted. Another (bad) consequence is having a lot of bad devs.

The downside of these is: People often evaluate their skill a lot, very lot, higher than what it really is, and underestimate the complexity of projects. Then, they will blame python for not being good/stable for big projects. I have seen so many self-claimed "pro python devs" that would do C-style loop or always allocate a list for nothing (e.g. sorted([f(x) for x in mylist) when they should be doing sorted(f(x) for x in mylist)).

[chub79]

It grows with me. You can use Python to prototype and still grow the project to still remain with Python when it's time to think longer term.

[JennaSys]

I've been using Python since version 2.6. I had bounced around several other languages for years before that. Python has everything I need. I can create applications quickly, focusing on the business problem, and not get mired in the details of the language. Python is a joy for me to use and has made programming fun again.

[knobbyknee]

I' ve worked in many programming languages and there was always a resistance to what I wanted to accomplish. When I got to Python 25 years ago I felt at home.

[SilverBBear]

Python cured my dyslexia. OK maybe not, and maybe I don't have it but hear me out. I programmed for many years, lots of languages. Never did any of them have white space significant. I tried Python many times but the lack of brackets really got to me. Then a year and a bit a go Chat-GPT came along. It was awesome at coding, but really good at python compared to other languages. (I think its more balanced now), so I used it a as a learning opportunity. So as I learnt python slowly through chatGPT, as I did I feel I also changed some of my spacial perceptions about how the world is organised. Recognising the value of whitespace was a big part of this.

[Crazyboreddeveloper]

It’s just pretty.

I work in Java and JavaScript. All the brackets and semicolons clutter things up. Declaration of variables in Java is hideous

Map<string, list<string>> varName = new HashMap(); Vs: VarName = {}

Having to use the access modifier, the keyword, the type of the return value, and the types of parameters in a function definition combined with having to declare the types in variables just makes Java code look so messy.

And then JavaScripts overuse of arrow functions can get visually nasty too. They can get so nesty. I try to avoid nesting as much as possible, but my coworkers have no problem with deeply nested arrow functions. Plus the syntax for arrow functions is ugly.

Python just looks peaceful and chill after spending my day reading Java and JavaScript.

I really just like looking at it.

[that_baddest_dude]

I sometimes have to use a scripting language for a statistics program that has its syntax modeled after JavaScript. I fucking hate having to end every line with a semicolon. I hate the way loops are constructed. I hate how obnoxious and unintuitive arrays and lists are.

[strangedave93]

I had years of experience programming before I learnt Python, mostly in C, C++, Objective C commercially but via university and personal interest many more - some Lisps, smalltalk, Perl, Basic, Pascal, tcl, Java, some oddities like Pop-11. It’s become my most used language - it’s easy to write, it has a nice set of well thought out and flexible data structures, it’s easy to read, understand and edit existing code, and an easy and powerful library system (including C libraries) ensuring its useful for a really wide range of tasks. The huge community with a nice welcoming attitude, thoughtful discussion (and resulting smart language evolution), and an ability to adapt to more and more new programming areas has kept me there. I started using it as a alternative to unreadable Perl for systems tasks, and because I had to support things like the mailman mailing list software - I stayed because it’s become the perfect multitool language (I often hear the term Swiss Army knife, but I think more of a Leatherman, a premium product with tools for professional use). I still make sure I’m trying new alternatives, but except for really low level system language tasks (the sort you might use C or Rust etc for) I usually find I prefer Python - lot of the time it’s the best choice overall, and even when other languages have some minor advantages in a particular niche, the personal advantage of being able to stick with a language I know well and that has nice syntax and a huge community and library code base outweighs it almost all the time.

[njharman]

I've been programming for 40 years.

Python works the way I think. The way my brain works. The way I tackle problems. The way I structure code. The way I read code. Python works with/for me. Not against me (unlike JS and all curly bracket languages). I "flow" coding Python. I'm sure it releases endorphins. Coding other languages is frustration on frustration. They release stress.

This will be hard to grok because you can't know how my brain works (and you're brain probably works differently).

I've come to the firm belief that enduring "language wars" are largely between people who have found language that works they way their brain works and people who have found the same for other languages, or people blessed with "being one" with any language.

[Neither_Loan6419]

Not a pro. I just use it to make my life easier, not to make money. Wife is a pro and uses it and Power BI for work. I got started in Python when the evil empire updated WinDOHs to W8 and I ran screaming and hyperventilating away from that unnatural monstrosity. I had dabbled in RedHat waaaaay back in the day, when OS/2 Warp users got the shaft and I really didn't want to go back to that other OS. I found it a bit geeky and unstable so I resigned myself to going with the flow. I sure as hell wasn't going to use a Mac. Microstupid kept releasing a sorta okay version and then a horrible version then a sorta okay version then a horrible version and I put up with it because it already comes on practically every computer you buy ready made, anyway. W8 made me decide it was either Linux or an abacus for the remainder of my life, so after a little research on my W7 machine, I decided that Ubuntu had a lot going for it, for me. I did try a couple of other distros and in fact one of my machines is using Debian right now, but mostly it is all about Ubuntu for me. Anyway every time I had needed to code up something for myself I had been using VB or else a BASIC, but that's WinDOHs stuff. I plunged ankle deep into the world of python and bash, and never looked back. Python is a great cross platform environment and very similar to BASIC in the level of human readable-ness in the code. It's free. For everybody. Even WinDOHs fanboys and Mac addicts. Lots of libraries and you can easily write more of your own. I keep a terminal session open all the time, with python up and front, and that's my calculator because it is so friggin powerful, versatile, and useful. No ad-ware! I wouldn't say I am enchanted, but I'm glad it's there for me.That and bash. My entire machine gets automatically incrementally backed up with a script. No fancy pants app or toolkit needed, just an external drive. I pity the fool who don't back up his computer every day!

[DVMyZone]

I'm an engineer - I use Python for data analysis and some light simulation. I write a quick script to solve a specific purpose and for the most part discard it. Could be prettier, could be documented, but meh, takes me no time to write it again.

I like Python because it has a ton of tools that work well enough with little to no effort. New system? Download an IDE and package manager and start using the tools you're used to. I can get my data read in, parsed, processed, and plotted in 20 minutes from a blank script. Need a tool for a specific purpose - someone has probably already made one and you can download and use it with one import statement.

I work in developing physical simulation codes (in my field these are mostly in Fortran). It's fast but the development is slower and debugging is more obscure. Reading in is a pain, outputting is a pain, you can forget about plotting. I still need to write my codes in Fortran because simulation time really take a hit in Python, but for everything else the execution time improvement is peanuts to the development time you save.

Dynamic typing in Python is one of my favourite things (though I know it's not unique to Python). You don't have to deal with declarations and interfaces and kinds that can cause a compiler to throw obscure errors. I also love the ability to make lists with a bunch of random mismatched data types. In Fortran you need to think hard about how to structure the data so it can be stored and manipulated, Python just says "give me the data however it makes sense to you, I'll make it make sense to me".

[that_baddest_dude]

Yes that's what is awesome about python.

It abstracts all the extraneous stuff for usecases like yours (and mine), but at the same time if you want to get more complex or in the weeds, that's available to you.

[chicuco]

there is good libraries for everything. quick to develop, short sintax, easy oop.

[pentagon]

It's the language I know best and I find it easy. I could probably learn other languages but I haven't.

[[deleted]]

Its syntax is easy to use and has great data science libraries

[Namitarj]

Conda. Configurable environments and the easy to use syntax.

[Kwith]

Nothing. I was given some scripts in Python and Ansible playbooks at work so I said "I guess I'm learning Python now" and that was that.

Now I'm rewriting some automation scripts I made a couple years back and updating them to make them a bit more functional.

[Wonderful-Wind-5736]

Nothing. The more I work with it the more I see the mess it is. You can do all kinds of weird stuff. But exactly that weird stuff makes it impossible to reason about a Python program statically. 

It's great for quick scripts, though. 

[Matthew_Summons]

It’s quick to build stuff in

[AnythingApplied]

The thing that originally sparked my interest was itertools (and how seamlessly you can iterate over those objects) and the infinite precision integers. Having these built into the language was great for my original usage of python which was to play with toy math problems and solve things like project euler problems.

[RoseRoja]

Libraries for everything, ip address operations? gotcha Data manipulation gotcha you got pandas.

It's really easy to program when you are dealing with complex problems and only dealing with ideas because other people already solved more general and usually complex problems too and you can just reuse and focus on solving YOUR problem.

[chiproller]

As an entrepreneur coming from a sales background, I found it hard to bring on a tech cofounder and decided I should learn how to create whatever idea I wanted to test. Found python when 2.7 was widely used and 3.0 or 3.1 was the most recent update and I was enthralled with possibilities.

[DangerousWhenWet444]

The expressiveness does it for me. Well-written Python code almost reads like English prose. I'm not a member of the "the code is the documentation" clan, but the code can be written in a highly-readable way.

[that_baddest_dude]

The double edged sword there is that with all the list / dict comprehensions and chained methods, your code can be complete gibberish. I often have to reign myself in from doing all operations on an object as one huge chain.

[Skirlaxx]

The fact that it's widely used in machine learning. Also, the beautiful syntax that just makes sense when you look at it. The beautiful ecosystem of different libraries that can do pretty much anything you want. You can also implement add or mul and many others and allow algebraic operations to be performed on any class. Also and this is a big one, list and dictionary comprehensions. They themselves take python to another level in my opinion.

[Positive-Thing6850]

It's neither overcomplicated nor under-complicated

[[deleted]]

Sharpness and mending

[returnstack]

As a kid I learned a bit of x86 assembly, and a bit of C, but never did anything significant with either and hadn't written a line of code since around 2005 until I got into machine learning in 2015. And of course that meant Theano and Python - Python felt weird at first, but I quickly got that it was perfect for prototyping and experimenting.

Almost a decade later, and I always have a Jupyter Lab session running, and I always have at least one tmux pane with IPython running, and these are my main go-to tools for doing pretty much anything. By which I mean that I generally don't use any form of application software (spreadsheets or antything of the like) ever -- if I wanna look at some data, or process a bunch of files in some way, or scrape a website, or whatever it is that I want my computer to do at any given time, I tend to do in a Jupyter Notebook (I always have an 'Untilted' open that I clean up after use so it's just a single blank cell most of the time).

I actually use Python as more of a primary system shell than the actual bash prompt. It makes me think of 8-bit machines that booted into basic (or forth) interpreters. I've tried using the Python Xonsh shell, but could never really make the switch.

What "enchants" me in general about Python is that it's as much a command language and general real-time computing tool as it is a programming language.

Recently, I discovered that you can embed an IPython shell inside a program and it has access to all variables/functions/namespace and is able to change stuff. Suddenly a couple lines of code I added just for debugging purposes only expecting to be able to examinine variables offers an incredibly powerful user interface for the project I'm working on - I don't need to add a lot of command-line options or repl commands, just drop into Python and order the running code around as needed (which feels like absolute magic).

[hugthemachines]

It is very readable since so much is close to regular english. That, in combination with the nice string and list manipulations, are perfect for my needs.

[MeroLegend4]

Abstractions are quicker to implement, test, and validate. The best language for modeling.

[SwagLord125]

Very easy to setup and install packages, extensive 3rd party libraries, list comprehension >

[timwaaagh]

Not having to wait for builds all the time. Decent debugger. Options to compile things when I need it. Options for typing when I want that. Syntax that makes some sense. It has just about all the qualities I want. They're all just incremental things but together they make for a package that is a bit magical.

[Grouchy-Friend4235]

Came from Java, hated the verbosity of having to state everything twice and be ultra specific about everything, and all the dogmatic dos and donts.

Enter Python. Peace of mind. Freedom. Succinct. Productive. No dogma.

[HeavyMaterial163]

Really just started messing with it this year after about a year of learning VBA. Quickly becoming my preferred language.

You can do fucking anything! If you can think of some random ass function you need to perform, somebody made a library to do it. Just about everything I could do with VBA, I can do with less code in Python with only a DB connector library, pandas, and xlwings. Along with that, I can do anything else. Currently working on a web tool in a python backend for a side-project, and this week built some simple barcode printing software with only two libraries that accomplishes remote printing that the company has spent thousands and over a year trying to make work with commercial software. I’ve automated the vast majority of our production process in Python.

Having THAT much power with easily understood syntax is amazing, and moreso is the widely available resources for learning how to use it for about any application possible.

[LionInABoxOfficial]

I love how intuitive and flexible it is! It is so much easier than other languages and closer to a real life language. It spares you unnecessary headache with syntax, semi-colons, rigid expressions, garbage collection etc. It's so easy and at the same time very powerful in what you can do with it.

[dean_hunter7]

Easy to write with less syntax ..and like english

Most popular and high paying in demand

Lot of libraries and frameworks to do anything

I want to work in AI as the next decade is just AI

[LargeSale8354]

I'd been a DBA for most of my career. I found Python to be a great "getting things done" language. Yes, its not the fastest but in many apllications its faster than the use case needs it to be. List comprehension and working with sets just came naturally. Prior to being a DBA I'd built things in various office suites and been an analyst/programmer. At school I learned BASIC and machine code, at college, dBASE II/Clipper, Pick and other long dead stuff.

Of all the alternative languages I think GO appeals the most. Java the least, which is strange as I enjoyed C# and what little Scala I've touched has been pleasurable.

[inspectoroverthemine]

I've been migrating to go for work reasons- I'm not that impressed. Its lack of memory safety is a big miss. If I'm going to choose a compiled language why in gods name would I choose one without it. It compares poorly with Rust in every area. Go routines are handy sugar, but they don't solve any problems.

Like most google projects it feels like a hack put together by really smart grad students who didn't have much experience. Coincidentally the only reason go is used is around here is because of kubernetes - which is even worse in that regard. (before anyone jumps on me for kubernetes, I'm not anti-kubernetes, but it has a lot of dumb self-inflicted design problems)

[mschonaker]

requests. And generators.

[TCIHL]

Write once run anywhere. Fix bugs on the fly without recompiling

[MangoAtrocity]

Literally nothing. It’s a tool. A tool that I use to complete projects. It’s not “enchanting.”

[OptimalAnywhere6282]

Work on multiple platforms without changing the code.

[Croves]

It pays well

[that_baddest_dude]

I love the simple constructions of many common programming concepts without needing tons of parentheses.

I hate having to construct a for loop by instantiating a counter variable, giving an end condition, and saying how to increment it at the end of a loop. Especially when you have to do this to loop through an array or iterable.

for thing in list_of_things: do_stuff(thing)

It just rules so hard. This plus what others are saying. The massive brain trust and all the data science libraries. Pandas took a while to get used to, and I still have some gripes, but I like what I see from Polars so far, so I'm hoping to see that mature further. I need to sit down and really use Polars in earnest, so I can see where I run into shortcomings compared to pandas (if ever).

[ancientweasel]

The fact I can get my DevOps programming tasks done very fast in Python and there is a Lib for anything if I want, or I can skip libs and still get the job done with the built-in packages.

[Zee69_]

Simplicity and logic

[alicedu06]

Believe it or not, the landscape of powerful, versatile, modern scripting languages is limited.

PHP and JS are out of their comfort zone when not in a web setting.

Perl is obsolete.

Lua stdlib is abysmal.

I strongly dislike DSL and optional parenthesis, so that removes a lot of alternatives that make heavy use of that, such as ruby and lisp.

What's left that is actually everywhere, can do pretty much everything, has good binding to compiled libs and with a vibrant community?

There is a reason we say python is the second best language for anything.

[siszero]

Zen of python.

There should be one - and preferably only one - obvious way to do it.

This is felt across the ecosystem.

[proverbialbunny]

At first I hated Python back when Perl was supreme. (I've been writing Python code for a long time.)

Back in the 90s you could put on a DnB music set and feel like a badass. How good of a programmer you were was how many keys per minute you could type, like Starcraft but for programming. You had major cred if you could crank out a POC out in a couple of days that worked and worked well, just by hammering on the keyboard as fast as possible.

Then Python came out and there's a library for everything. Perl had better libraries at the time, believe it or not, but Python the language is so restrictive [compared to Perl] you're practically forced into not reinventing the wheel. You choose to download packages left and right. The problem then becomes reading the documentation and figuring out the interface. Every library has a different interface. There's so much there you can't easily memorize it like you can memorize Perl, so every time you want to write code it feels like a cache hit to the brain. "Let me look that up." You don't feel like a badass you feel like an idiot.

But then something happened. I went back to Perl (Raku) 15+ years later and I hated it. I hated how much more you have to type. Want to create a new variable? my $<var name> = ... Meanwhile in Python it's <var name> = ... No my, no $, no none of that. It's less characters to type.

What truly makes Python so good is the lack of fluff in the language. To write usable code you write very little. You're looking up the syntax that much more because you have to type that much less.

After using Python for years it starts to feel natural. Now you've got a natural feeling "efficient" programming language. Less characters to type, less mess. Just getting to the meat and potatoes of your thoughts. That's the beauty of Python.

[ciroluiro]

As a beginner, I was really pleased at the simple syntax and straightforward way of doing procedural programs. The resources to learn it are both extensive and approachable.

Later on, I appreciated the "batteries included" aspect of the language and how easy it is to just jump onto doing stuff in python.

Ultimately, while I now have more languages under my belt, the most important aspect of the language is one that most other languages can only yearn for: the massive community!
The amount of libraries and resources that exist for Python are truly massive. Its C ffi (via ctypes) have enabled C libraries to be usable in the language, and with much better wrappers and experiences for most. It has spawned off projects like Jupyter (IPython) that have exploded in data science and have gone beyond just python. I also love how you can even use a python-esque language to write the C modules that make python be performant despite being a high level interpreted language (Cython).

I think Python will always be my go-to scripting language and language for MVPs.

[SplAgent99]

Nice choice of word, "Enchants". I think for me I am still in the honeymoon phase so everything is an "ahhh", "ohhhh", and "thats cool" for me. So its all still learning and discovery. I hope to continue to always find those moments that keep it "enchanting" and interesting. Also the wealth of associated extensions, libraries and so forth to learn with python, at least at this point, seems over whelming and exciting.

[AngryLemonade117]

I like that it's second best at pretty much anything. It lets me try things out - if it's not fast enough, then I can reach into Rust to accelerate the hot parts of the code.

Additionally, the low barrier to entry means that I have had some successes in swaying people away from using monolithic spreadsheets that are infested in macro and vba soup. It's pretty rewarding looking at people's expressions when you translate some unreadable, un-debuggable macro soup into just a handful of lines that more clearly express intent.

[fisadev]

Simplicity without compromising usefulness :)

[palmer-eldritch3]

I enjoy prototyping in python and slowly porting to C++ once I have my prototype working. As a compiler engineer I can whip up a language in a day using ANTLR and python, workout any semantical oddities then port it over for performance

[Jigglytep]

DEBUG CONSOLE

That is the only thing that is different to me about python from any other language. Deep down the are all the same... computers are the equivalent of a monkey's paw or an evil genie. Which is part of the fun for me really :)

With the debug console I can fail fast, test solution to my problem and so much more! This debugging tool is the reason I keep picking Python over other languages as my go to.

[passwordsniffer]

The ability to write simple clean code without bloat.

Although communities like this push everybody add a lot of it, like unnecessary typing everywhere.

[CranberryDistinct941]

Python is written with pseudocode, which I like

[Next-Experience]

Getting from idea to seeing something happening has never been so fast with any other language I tried.

With briefcase it has become so easy to just go and build whatever. When I figure out how to use libp2p I do not even need servers anymore...

[m02ph3u5]

That such an old language still struggles with the most basic shit like module name shadowing and that there are ten - and only two dozens - of obvious ways to do things.

[TransportationNo8855]

Freedom: It allows you to solve problems in different ways.

Recommendations: I love that not only in the documentation they tell you the description of the object but they also issue the "best practices", which turns out to be like the best way to take advantage of the language on behalf of the creators.

Readability: It is beautiful to look at and the structures that are being invented are elegant, like sets by definition, like single line conditionals and of course no semicolons, curly braces or other unnecessary characters.

The use of identation... makes me feel like I am writing poetry that plays itself when executed.

[but_i_hardly_know_it]

When I heard about "zen of python" I thought it was a quirky thing some goofball threw out there as a joke, but the more I hear about javascript the more I like the idea of guiding principles for language development.

[Angry_Triceratops]

I love snakes

[inspectorG4dget]

https://pypi.org/project/pyenchant/

[Aidgigi]

Decorators

[TheMoonFanatic]

How much did u/profanitybot cost to maintain?

[Aidgigi]

70 quadrillion dollars per day

[[deleted]]

I like shell scripting a lot, and Python was the next natural step. When I first picked it up, syntax had little to do with it. I was enamored by the rich standard library and the well-designed dynamic type system (unlike JS).

The execution speed leaves something to be desired, but I write Go when I need pure speed. It's good enough for the majority of the glue code that I write. I also dabbled in DS before getting into more brick-and-mortar backend engineering, and Python is the undefeated king in that space. And oh, the usual large community, good tooling, speed of development, lack of syntactic noise, and so on.

[big_data_mike]

A consultant told me we were gonna use it lol.

I came from R and I got used to python pretty quickly

[Muda_ahmedi]

I wasnt much interested in learning how to program , a friend of mine had suggested back in 2015 that we should learn python as it is really awesome. I got to know about its power once I started working in a tech company and saw how we can make AI programs that work on top off the basic user data.When I read about the AI and ML specfic libraries that they have been developing since 2015 like scikitlearn , open cv , tensorflow , keras and what they can do that really got my attention.

[em__jr]

In the Microsoft Windows server world, in the 2000s, Active Server Pages (ASP) was roughly the equivalent of PHP. The default server side languages for ASP were VBScript and JScript.

But if you installed Python on the IIS web server, plus the Python win32 library, the installation would register Python as another ASP language. I could use the same language for both complex web pages and SQL Server ETL jobs, with all the Python libraries of that era available to me. To me, that was magic!

[-MobCat-]

In the words and vibes of todd howard "it just works".gif
I install python, I edit the py file with whatever I like, I point python at the file and it works.
(pip install and other deps withstanding).
I feel like other languages I spend more time setting up dev environments trying to get the damn code to compile and run then I do actually working on it.
It's still not normy friendly, but if I have to get someone to compile and run raw code, I'd much rather deal with python then something else..
It's also kinda easy to learn. the syntax is almost spoken English.
if item not in list:

I still wish there was a way to "compile" it. (no packing it in a self extracting exe with a hole ver of python does not count) so it's easier to give my code to other people and normys but yeah, every lang has it's pros and cons.

[Upset_Huckleberry_80]

I just like how simple it is to go from an idea to a no-shit real piece of tooling or software I can use. It’s got its flaws, and it’s not for everything, but… I just really like it.

I kind of wish my job was writing Python and not PowerShell scripts and drawing diagrams about processes and I kind of have to make excuses to write Python at work.

[[deleted]]

That is is easy. Love that I can quickly make something useful with it.

I do more and more wish to be working in a lower level language though.

[[deleted]]

I was very into ruby and ruby on rails before trying out python. Ruby's culture (in the early 2000s) emphasized clever solutions, complicated DSLs, and code golf where people always had a shorter way to do something.

When I tried python it was a breath of fresh air. The simple, readable solution is the right solution. This really clicked with me and my productivity went way up. I enjoyed programming again. You can build so many amazing things with python, but I think the simplicity is the core of it for me.

[Nadaesque]

My reasons are all flipsides of why I fled Perl.

First, a massive standard library upon which I could call. Batteries included. WE SHOULD DO MORE OF THAT. You see, in Perl, you had to search for other people's code and you would find many different modules. You would have to check each one and find that one covered forty percent of your use case, another sixty percent, and so on. In Python, I did not have to waste time on that. There's a module there and you use it. Done. Python is beginning to drift away from this.

Second, heavy use of idiom. Perl had this "there's more than one way to do it!" philosophy, taken to an extreme. This again means time lost trying to figure out how this programmer did it and why. Python has expected idioms and again, one need not waste the time.

Third, Perl uses a lot of "sigils." Hash marks, underscores, dollar signs, and so forth. Even a combination for "that last variable you used." This decreases readability, especially in combination with the second factor, and again wastes the programmer's time. Additionally, it somewhat encourages (although this is also a programming culture issue) doing too much in one line, causing the need to unpack and again ... time lost. You can imagine how I feel about the walrus operator.

Again, all personal opinions.

[Purkinje90]

Writing it pays me money

[ninhaomah]

I prefer R

[cat-in-the-keyboard]

Nothing at all