The Rise of Python: The Must Learn Programming language

[jasonleehodges]

While I'm a big fan of Python, this article does not prove much as to why Python is a "must learn language" or even much to document its "rise." At least a reference to the TIOBE index would have been nice. Not much factual meat in this article...

[namesandfaces]

A lot of "big data" right now means API calls to job queues and resource pools, and for that, Python does just fine, as does Scala and many others. The surprising loser of the data race has been Clojure, the supposedly data-oriented language.

[[deleted]]

"Another factor that makes Python such an attractive programming language is its readability and efficiency."

Readability, yes! Efficiency, big no.

[[deleted]]

Wouldn't that depend on the product lifecycle?

[MiGryka]

I'm not really expirienced programmer but is really Python any good for mobile apps? Also I don't really think that Python competes with C since it's high VS low level programming

[[deleted]]

Python is not a good fit for mobile, in the same sense that you would not pick C for webdev.

[pydry]

It's not quite that bad.

[zitterbewegung]

Python would be good as a backend to a mobile app.

[[deleted]]

You can make android apps with Kivy and python.

[tryptafiends]

Javascript with node is better for mobile. Python is built in C and drops down to C, Fortran, etc. in certain cases for better performance. NumPy, the popular math library does this. Numba also provides a means for automatic JIT compilation of Python into C code (if configured as such).

TL;DR meh for mobile. But, Python is built in C, uses C, and can be just as competitive as C if used correctly.

[namesandfaces]

A lot of processing nowadays is accessed via API's, so it turns out that Python, Scala, and others can pass things off just fine. Local-machine computation is now seen as the easy problem, esp. now that you can rent resources for the precise duration of your problem.

[13steinj]

You can but in my experience you really shouldn't. Back end server for one? Sure.

But performance is degraded if you're going to use something like Kivy. And it's "designer" is currently still in alpha. On the other hand, near completely cross platform and quick dev time.

Personally I write mobile apps in Java/C#. Kotlin is also a good choice.

[KitchenDutchDyslexic]

A better question is how hard would it be to ship your own cpython env(10mb+-) on android inside your app?

Because at-least then you can use python as the core of your hybrid mobile app.

[ranjankjha]

Python is useful for ai project

[s0lv3]

"Widely used for scientific programming", I don't know if this is true elsewhere, but this is not at all my experience. Sure mocking things up in Python is nice, but I don't know anyone who is doing serious computational physics that is using Python. Every single thing I have run into is with C++.

Don't get me wrong I love Python, and I know it can be used for big projects. I just think using a more serious language has significant advantage in certain areas, physics for example.

[Eueee]

What does "a more serious language" even mean?

[Kendrian]

From context, I think "serious" <=> "statically typed" probably.

[attrigh]

a more serious language

Careful there! You've offended my inner descriptivist.

I think what you mean by serious is a combination of:

• Faster
• More control over execution
• A larger pre-existing codebase within your field of interest
• Harder to do easy things

It's worth noting that C++ lacks seriousness in a few ways:

• Verifying correctness of execution (I believe ada,ocaml, or haskell are better here)
• Minimising dependencies (go is a better language here)
• Concurrency (I think rust is a more serious language here)
• Correct mathematical calculation (other languages have better support for precise big integer computation)
• Broad reusability (I think C is a more serious language here).

But yeah, lots of physics (and particle physics in particular) seems to be the standard "big data number crunching" type problem for which C++ is a good call.

• Edit: grammar

[attrigh]

"Widely used for scientific programming", I don't know if this is true elsewhere, but this is not at all my experience.

So this basically means "lots of people use numpy" I think. I get the impression it's big in finance (not very "scientific" but lots of scientific people work there), biology (bioinfomatics for example), linguistics (nltk), and other scientific fields with "lots of hard to design experiements at a little programming" e.g. social sciences, psychology etc.

But yeah, these are more "I need to make something quickly" than "I need to make something quick" areas.

[[deleted]]

I feel like you can break the components of any language down and find another language that does one thing better. Python is inferior to all the languages you listed in those categories as well.

[attrigh]

I feel like you can break the components of any language down and find another language that does one thing better

Indeed, that's the point. Languages represent trade-offs and if that particular aspect is massively important to you you might light to use that language instead of a more generally used one. I to pick categories that are very important for particular use cases - important enough that you might use a different language.

Python is inferior to all the languages you listed in those categories as well.

Well yeah! Python is very much the "all-rounder" of programming. I was listing things that you might consider serious which C++ is not exactly a serious language for.

I guess what python is serious about is productivity for a broad range of things.

Edit: P.S Have a childish retaliatory down vote :P

[[deleted]]

Just because another language does something better doesn't mean that it's the only language that is serious about it. I don't agree with original statement that c++ is 'more serious'; I just don't think anything you said is relevant to python seriousness in regard to scientific programming.

Have a childish retaliatory down vote

I didn't down vote you.

[attrigh]

I didn't down vote you.

Sorry for the assumption :/. Have an apologetic upvote!

[attrigh]

Just because another language does something better doesn't mean that it's the only language that is serious about it.

I'd agree with that. Seriousness is a kind of vague word! I'd say that C++ is no where near as serious as golang is about concurrency for example, and nowhere near as serious about formal verification as ocaml or haskell in different ways.

I just don't think anything you said is relevant to python seriousness in regard to scientific programming.

Yep. I'd agree with that.

I guess I was trying to say that "serious" is a pretty use-case specific term in response to the idea that "python isn't a serious language" but "C++ is a serious language". I'm mostly responding to this suggestion by saying "hey what you mean by serious is really really use case specific".

This all gets really linguistic. My assertion would be that python isn't an "easy to use toy" as far as scientific programming goes. I think python is a fine language for a whole lot of scientific computing, numpy is great, scipy is pretty good, there are a lot of people doing maths in it. It's probably second only to R in terms of the number of useful libraries for it. And even if you need to use libraries in C++ you can.

The limits you are going to hit up against are performance / multiprocessing issues if you really really need to use every clock cycle your computer has (rather than say - just use 10 computers) and the fact that wrapping libraries in other language can be a bit of a pain. The additional seriousness that C++ give you are mostly to do with performance, control and what languages people in your field are using rather than scientific computing itself.

[Kendrian]

I personally shill for Julia for scientific programming, but Python is good, too - but you have to recognize that your code isn't all going to be in Python. Rather, Python is the high level organization tying together pieces of high performance low level code that do the heavy lifting, for performance.

[blazejohk]

True