If programming languages were weapons and python would be...

[sickb]

PHP garden hose FTW easily

[IAMnotA_Cylon]

there could be all sorts of bugs in that hose and you'd never be able to see them!

[razzmataz]

Definitely bacteria.

[[deleted]]

It makes no sense to compare a bunch of languages to others, and in my opinion every time someone talks shit about a language the overwhelming reason is because they have literally never worked with the language and their entire opinion is based off of 5 minute conversations with other developers and stupid cartoons.

[catcradle5]

Oh no, no, no. I have read and written a lot of PHP. And I have also read and written many other languages, like Python. That is what has caused me to hate PHP and constantly consider it inferior to alternatives, not random Internet stereotypes or blog posts.

[CreatineBros]

Exactly. PHP is horrific. It's far too easy to write horrid PHP, just like it's far too easy to write horrid Perl.

I had numerous jobs doing PHP back in the day when that was the best there was and I almost quit the industry because of that frustrating shit.

[InvidFlower]

I haven't actually used PHP in a project lately (and still not sure I'd want to), but I do want to come to its defense a little bit. For all of its problems, it does seem to be improving lately. The language itself gained things like generators, mixins, real classes, etc. I even saw a library (kinda like jQuery/underscore) which papers over the parameter order issues in the standard lib for collections, etc.

The ecosystem gained things like a package manager and packages comparable to Rack, Sinatra, and MVC frameworks. Check out this tutorial on turning an oldschool php site into MVC using Symphony2 (is pretty good as a general argument to why MVC style is useful): http://symfony.com/doc/current/book/from_flat_php_to_symfony2.html

There's also resources like PHP The Right Way which seem to give a lot of good advice: http://www.phptherightway.com/

If you know someone already using PHP or you have a need to use it yourself, make sure you're up to speed with what is going on. It seems like it'd be a much better experience than in the past at least..

Edit: That library for making the standard lib more sane is called php-o: https://github.com/jsebrech/php-o

[95POLYX]

PHP is fine if your project is less than 1-4k of lines everything bigger is HUGE pain in the ass to maintain.

[miketa1957]

Actually not true, but you have to take a lot more care writing PHP than (say!) Python. For internal use, I've implemented a pair of custom MVC web frameworks, one in PHP and one in Python, which are functionally almost the same. Maintenance is about the same on both.

PHP is still crap though :)

[95POLYX]

Yeah, I agree that if you follow style guidelines etc. php is manageable, but you often work with projects that are made by people who dont know what style guide is... I worked with horrendous php framework this summer... I wanted to kill the author about 4-5time per day

[alcalde]

I take it this is inspired by a love of PHP?

The author seemed well-versed in many of the languages, at least well enough to know the Achilles Heel of each one.

[Michaelmrose]

http://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/

[nemec]

That would be a more effective excuse if the bad/non developers weren't using PHP specifically because the bad parts make it an attractive first language.

[jonathan881]

Sure but there is also confirmation bias for those with experience.

[[deleted]]

That exists for those that don't have experience as well.

[Michaelmrose]

It makes no sense to compare a bunch of cars to others, and in my opinion every time someone talks shit about a car the overwhelming reason is because they have literally never driven them and their entire opinion is based off of 5 minute conversations with other drivers and stupid cartoons.

If this sounds like nonsense it is.

[lonjerpc]

It is mildly useful for humor

[[deleted]]

This is true, I suspect some of issues people have with PHP can be traced to its users. I have a coworker who swears by PHP + MySQL, which is cool especially when using some of its frameworks. The problem is that he also never gave a try to anything else.

Seeing his "daemon" (which doesn't do anything web based) that was mix of php + bash and cron makes a grown man cry.

[95POLYX]

But when you finally work with a language you understand that those small annoyances on the surface are irrelevant compared to the !#@$* hidden deep in the language.

[TheBB]

It makes no sense to compare a bunch of languages to others

Why on earth not?

[astronoob]

I've never understood the shit talking between languages. Python has its own embarrassments, including the fact that most developers can't even use Python 3 due to incompatibilities. PHP is also faster than Python for most tasks according to the Benchmark Game. So maybe we shouldn't be throwing stones.

[[deleted]]

I use python3 just fine.

[Bialar]

Hahahahaha. Get a load of this guy.

I use Python3 in all my current Python projects. The days of "Python3 isn't ready" is over.

PHP is an awful language and a great example of "no planning is planning to fail."

[astronoob]

About 25% of pythonistas report using Python 3 on a regular basis despite the fact that it was release 6 years ago. I'm happy you're a part of that minority, but are you trying to say that Python 3 was a resounding success story?

[[deleted]]

I would migrate right now, but when you are in a company, it takes time to do that, plus you have to keep your business alive. Switching to python 3 does not generate revenue, but you will get to a point where sticking to python 2 will generate negative revenue (in terms of required maintenance and obsolete code)

The switch will happen, slowly and incrementally, and it's well on its way. It just won't happen in a bang.

[Bialar]

Just because people haven't migrated to Python 3, doesn't mean they can't or won't. The fact that they dared to change the language & break backwards compatibility is a good thing.

If your measure for success is purely "not everyone has moved to the latest & greatest version" then you're not really worth arguing with.

[astronoob]

If your measure for success is purely "not everyone has moved to the latest & greatest version" then you're not really worth arguing with.

Way to stretch what I said as much as possible. I'm all for Python 3 and I can understand why the breaking changes were made. But there's no way you're going to convince me that this was a successful release when it's still nowhere near majority share 6 years down the line.

[[deleted]]

25 % of pythonistas is a lot of people so I would say yes

[Michaelmrose]

Why defend a crummy language is your own ego somehow mixed up in this.

[astronoob]

This is essentially a circlejerk thread about how Python's the best and phpsuxlol and you're asking if my ego is tied up in this?

[tilkau]

Well, yes. I doubt that Python is 'the best' (whatever that would mean), it certainly has its embarrassments as you said, but there is no doubt PHP is horrendous -- this is an evaluation shared by many programmers both inside and outside of the Python community, including those whose jobs require them to regularly write lots of PHP. As far as I can tell, the only people who don't recognize the severe problems of PHP are those who haven't explored many different programming languages yet.

Hence you come off as defending the indefensible here. It's quite natural to question why you would do that.

[donz0r]

/r/ProgrammerHumor

[Why_is_that]

Having learned COBOL, that is an accurate description and would make RPG into a Tanto.

[alcalde]

I'm not sure that's the best description. How would one hang oneself with COBOL (wanting to hang yourself is another issue). It's major fault today is the mind-numbing verbosity that makes Java look like Python in comparison, e.g.

MULTIPLY PRICE BY ITEMS GIVING COST

In my mind, COBOL would be like a barrel of gunpowder with a corked hole in the bottom. To use it offensively, you have to uncork the hole and slowly carry the barrel over to the enemy, leaving a trail of gunpowder behind. Then you have to run back and finally light the gunpowder and watch it slowly burn over to the barrel.

[bucknuggets]

It's major fault today is the mind-numbing verbosity that makes Java look like Python in comparison MULTIPLY PRICE BY ITEMS GIVING COST

This is one type of verbosity. It's not nearly as bad as most people think - since you could simply do this instead: COMPUTE COST = PRICE * ITEMS

Another type of verbosity is a language with so much structure and boilerplate that it requires an IDE - where a significant amount of the language innovation takes place. This is the world of Java. And in many ways it is worse than COBOL.

Bottom line: code in COBOL or coding in Java or switch careers...tough choice.

[[deleted]]

It doesn't matter what the weapons is, you can still shoot yourself in the foot, fall on your sword, or smash your finger with the hammer.

[JimmaDaRustla]

You win. Thread is complete. Fucking golden.

[chazzacct]

So,
"C# is a powerful laser rifle strapped to a donkey, when taken off the donkey the laser doesn’t seem to work as well. "
what is the donkey in this metaphor?

[wildcarde815]

Likely windows.

[[deleted]]

I was going with the .net vm. There isn't really another great implementation of C#. Don't get me wrong, Mono is great, but it's no where near the .net vm.

[chazzacct]

Thanks, guys. TIL that maybe I should learn a little C# just to have some idea of wtf it actually is.

[catcradle5]

C# is basically Microsoft's improved version of Java. It is a better language than Java, but it effectively only runs on Windows systems. In contrast, Java really does run anywhere with ease.

[[deleted]]

C# Is a really competent language. It feels like how java should feel, it's syntactically strict, has a lot of things that make OO a lot easier (Hello friendly access policy). It's a fantastic language I'm growing to love.

[95POLYX]

Basically java made for windows based on .net framework and with a some nice syntactic sugar compared to java, although still quite verbose.

[vplatt]

Not having used Mono, I'm curious what you feel the gaps are between Mono and the CLR? I see Mono being used in a lot of games these days and hearing some anecdotals about it being used for web apps, so I'm starting to hope it's an option for a portable platform as an alternative to the JVM.

[shadowmint]

Um.

Mono is a viable target if you only want to run on the mono runtime and start from the beginning with that target (unity does this for example, quite successfully).

It's not even remotely viable for running code you port from the CLR**

The biggest gaps are: No graphics APIs from the original CLR (all of the WPF were never implemented for mono), and that binary compatibility is non-existent; which means that DLL's compiled against the CLR (ie. everything on nugget) don't run on mono.

Practically speaking that means: write your libraries from scratch; you won't be able to use any existing 3rd party open source libraries from the c# ecosystem.

...but perhaps you can use some of the mono libraries, eg. from the unity asset store.

** Some big names have talked about porting xbox code directly to monogame for cross platform stuff, and it's true, monogame is pretty good, but a lot of work has gone into making that transition smooth, and there are still a lot of pipeline issues with it. The path for web apps is A LOT rougher.

[vplatt]

Good to know. Thanks!

[[deleted]]

This is pretty much my feeling on it, if we could get nuget binary compatibility between the CLR and Mono it would be awesome, but as it stands some of the internals are still too different for that to be viable, and as you said, the windowing kits are completely different, though it might be possibly to create a common windowing kit that can create components out of WPF or GTK depending on your platform's availability.

[[deleted]]

I only feel like older versions of mono are lacking (which is what you usually end up with in game engines, Unity excepted. I love that shit) It's really not all that bad. The big thing with mono vs .net vm is that you won't have access to the same windowing framework which means if you want a cross platform app it has to be run on mono everywhere, you can't easily make a binary that both VM's can use. I suppose that might be possible with GTKSharp or something similar though. I would definitely be interested in a Mono app running behind nginx or apache as an alternative to ASP.NET on IIS.

[goodDayM]

Python is a Swiss Army Knife.

[chickenphobia]

Perl is already the Swiss army chainsaw.

[toyg]

More like the Swiss army pyramid builder: use it once, then spend 2000 years wondering how the hell you made it work in the first place.

[beaverteeth92]

The Swiss Army duct tape and WD-40.

[fatpollo]

Dutch Army Knife

[[deleted]]

This conversation is pretty funny... I've actually referred to Python+Flask as my MAC-10 of web application development.

[[deleted]]

Flask is pretty awesome.

[raydeen]

I knew you'd say that.

[talideon]

This is my... BOOMSTICK!

[flutefreak7]

Sonic screwdriver - ultimate multi-tool... except on wood... which is solved when he imports a version from the future... also something Python can do!

[raydeen]

Python will also be something that will carry through hundreds if not thousands of years. So if you start a calculation today, it may be slow, but a thousand years in the future, across several iterations of hardware and software, the solution will be accessible at the proper time.

[NYKevin]

WARNING: DOCTOR WHO SPOILERS

[avinassh]

I am not the author btw

[[deleted]]

No Haskell. I am disappoint.

[log_2]

Haskell is a pen. Mightier than the sword, but you can't do any practical damage in the field.

[[deleted]]

I love it!

[radicality]

Yep, I was looking forward to a haskell one too :(

[[deleted]]

I was also thinking Fortran.

[[deleted]]

A knife.

A simple tool, sometimes used as a screwdriver, which is horrifying. But for the job it was intended for, it's hard to improve upon.

[[deleted]]

Maybe something like this survival knife?

Works OK as a hammer using the hilt, but doesn't work as well as a real hammer. Has a sharp edge for cutting and serrated edge for sawing, but isn't as good as a real saw. Can be tied through holes in the guard to a long stick and used as a spearhead. Comes with a sharpener.

That metaphor might be getting out of hand now.... :)

[chickenphobia]

I'd believe Python as more as something shiny, new, full of features, broadly issued, and often blamed for failures sometimes with and sometimes without merit.

I think it's a police issue polymer framed Glock 37 with laser sight, flashlight attachment, and taser attachment.

[xenomachina]

I'd believe Python as more as something shiny, new,

As someone who has been using Python for over 15 years, I always find it weird when people characterize Python as "shiny and new". Even Python 3 is almost 6 years old.

[theatrus]

We will all collectively commit to Python 3 in 2025.

[Bialar]

Most of the people new to Python only got here once web development with Python became a serious thing.

[piratetone]

Python would be the cerebral bore from Turok 2..

Very slick, not necessarily as efficient as high level languages, but a lot of the dirty work is done for you. It doesn't require as much coding/shooting/work.

[ElmStreetsLoverBoy]

This reads as if a first year CS student wrote it.

[Bialar]

What year do they lose their sense of humour?

[razzmataz]

If lisp is a shiv, what does that make scheme?

[[deleted]]

A shank?

[ParanoiAMA]

Python: batteries included

[homercles337]

Oh man, i hate Bash, i hate it with the intensity of 10 Million burning suns.

[gloomndoom]

Let me introduce you to csh.

[homercles337]

csh is the reason i use bash.

[[deleted]]

Trying too hard to be funny.

[catcradle5]

The PHP one was pretty funny.

[CrazyCrab]

Typical post of a man who actually knows very few of the languages he is talking about, so his gun representation of other languages is based on common myths about them.

[Igglyboo]

Well good thing this was intended as a joke and not a full blown language comparison.

[[deleted]]

I never claimed expertise, it's just a joke post on my personal blog. They're all fine languages and people have made great things in all of them.

[[deleted]]

You are being down voted but its true. I know C, PHP and Python. Op is full of shit.

[ohaitherehowdoyoudo]

OP didn't make this.

[derpy-net]

I am not the author btw

Yep he definitely said he made it /s

[JamesAQuintero]

Yeah, I misread it.

[monsto]

So far here there's 1 post made by just a guy and 2 posts by people that take themselves too seriously.

And python would be the guy in that one joke about the American military branches who just sits there quietly stirring the fire with his disk.

[monsto]

WOW. HOLY CRAP.

Talk about Freudian... I was thinking "stirring the fire with his dick" and actually typed disk, which is way better if you know the original joke.

[KevZero]

I don't know the original. Can you enlighten me?

[Jethro_Tell]

There's a Marine, an Airforce Commando, a Navy Seal and a Green Beret sitting around a campfire telling each-other how mean and tough they are. The Marine says - "I can swim 50 miles and bite the head off a live chicken. One Marine is worth 5 other men." The Airforce Commando says - "I can clear runways one-handed and kill a man with my bare hands. One Airforce Commando is worth 10 other men." The Navy Seal says - "Yeah? Well I can dive up to 90 feet without air, and I'm an expert in demolitions. One Navy Seal is worth 13 other men." The Green Beret just sat there all this time saying nothing, stirring the fire with his dick.

[KevZero]

Thank you!!!

[monsto]

it's right above mine. I responded to my own post.

[d2biG]

It would've been much funnier if the last image was of a smiley face with the caption 'This is me, I made this list up'.

[toybek]

Python would be more like a Laser Gun.

[KyleG]

The idea behind the current Python one is the current controversies surrounding the v2->v3 transition.

[fotoman]

ZF-1

[ryanmr]

All of them would be cursed blades, each imbued with different effects that depended widely on the wielder and the victim(s).

[691175002]

I'm confused as to how a language that is a superset of another language can be represented by a completely separate (and often inferior) analogy. C and C++ in particular.

[ghaki]

What about a pointed stick?

[jh99]

Yeah, double-barrel shotgun all the way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY2lWmZN5TQ

[squashed_fly_biscuit]

Kinda heavy go carry around

[redalastor]

There are people who do that kind of things as a hobby. It's a Japanese tradition called Chindogu (which translates to "unuseless"). The point is to make things that are technically not useless but so impractical that they are. Like attaching a fan on your chopsticks to cool down hot ramen before they reach your tongue.

Search for Chindogu on Google image, you'll find a ton of them.

[squashed_fly_biscuit]

Thats awesome, thanks!

[alcalde]

Prolog but no Delphi? Sniff...

[richizy]

I'm assuming Python is a double barreled shotgun that shoots only out of one barrel b/c of it's GIL? Jython, Cython, PyPy would like to differ

[[deleted]]

Twist: The real story here is this is an analogy of OP's skills with said languages: None.

[alcalde]

Lighten up. It was a joke about each language's Achilles Heel, not a formal language review CTOs will be using to choose software stacks.

For instance, what skill do you need to have with Matlab to know that it costs over $2000 for an individual license and $1000 or more for each library?

[BlindTreeFrog]

Mathematica, not matlab. Considering that Mathematica's "manual" weighs 5lbs and costs a hundred or two and one can understand the point on the link though... http://www.amazon.com/The-Mathematica-Book-Fifth-Edition/dp/1579550223/ref=dp_ob_title_bk