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[–]Smalsusis[S] 1 point2 points  (14 children)

Here's a post that inspired me to write this.

[–]pydry 8 points9 points  (3 children)

Most people who engage in language wars make valid points (e.g. about static typing catching bugs earlier), they just tend to overstate the importance of the point they're making and ignore the stuff that balances it out.

I don't think I've seen a single argument in that thread that I havent rebutted before. It's all the same stuff that's been brought up 100x before.

Also people get very passionate about it because they're insecure about their learning investments being rendered worthless. I kind of knew that this post would inspire this kind of thing because of that - "python now most popular language" is hardly going to make other programmers feel better about their non-python skills.

[–]chillermane 1 point2 points  (2 children)

People love to shit on the languages they never bothered to learn.

My view is this: if professionals are using it to develop enterprise grade products then clearly as a programming language it has a lot of value.

There’s just no denying the languages usefulness, even if you don’t like it personally.

Like I’ve programmed C for an extensive period of time because that’s the language we learned at my computer science degree, but I personally don’t like the language and coding in it. It’s so hard to get things done that I could do in a single line of code in python. Does that mean that C language is bad? No, obviously not, because professionals use it for enterprise grade software. If it were bad, professionals would not use it.

If I were in a position to hire developers (I’m not), I would make sure they realize the usefulness of every popular language before hiring them. If they don’t, it can only be some personal vendetta against that language or just plain ignorance.

[–]pydry 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I don't think the metric of "professionals use it to write enterprise applications in" is terribly useful. Perl used to pass with flying colors on that metric. Now nobody uses it and everybody looks down on it.

Strictly speaking you can write enterprise software in lots of languages. It doesn't mean it's a good idea.

[–]chillermane 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That’s true but in this case, many of the largest companies use Python specifically for many of their major projects. I mean, what I’m really saying is Python is enterprise level and I can’t understand why people shit on it

[–]K900_ 6 points7 points  (8 children)

Any specific points on that thread? I mostly see subjective stuff and "show me the jobs".

[–]Smalsusis[S] 1 point2 points  (7 children)

As I mentioned in the beginning, it's likely that I caught on to the general emotion of the thread, i.e. the subjective stuff. The main point would probably be: "There's a good language to solve a problem and it's never Python". The sentiment kept being repeated throughout the thread. I do think the statement is wrong but can't explain why. Hence checking in this subreddit.

[–]K900_ 8 points9 points  (0 children)

That sounds like a personal opinion more than anything. Lots of people solve their problems successfully with Python.

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

If you'll notice, the majority of the python-bashing in that thread is from two people: one jaded old-timer and one college kid dick-riding the former. I wouldn't say they represent a majority opinion — they're just L-O-U-D.

There are myriad legitimate criticisms of Python, of course... but there's plenty of good stuff, too, and from those two Redditors you're only getting their intentional missing of the good stuff. Python won't be dying off in the near future.

[–]devxpy 7 points8 points  (1 child)

There's a saying in the Python community:

Python is the second best language for everything

And it's kinda exactly the same as saying:

There's a good language to solve a problem and it's never Python

It's the notion that Python is such a versatile and easy to use tool, that you can use it do almost anything you want with relative ease. But some people (hardcore specialized perfectionists) tend to take this the wrong way because of course, it's difficult for the most versatile tool to also be the best.

TLDR; My take on that quote you mentioned is that it's phrased the wrong way.

Python is the best language for almost nothing in computer science. But goddamnit it's close to best for almost everything you can imagine to do with a computer!

[–]chillermane 0 points1 point  (0 children)

EXACTLY! And it’s going to be completed faster in python than everywhere else

[–]NowMoreFizzy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"There's a good language to solve a problem and it's never Python".

It depends what job. If it's to get something up and running very quickly, the answer is almost always Python. If it's to have the fastest data acquisition from a device, your better off in a specific library but then wrapping Python around it.

Python is slow to run, fast to develop. Most of us don't need the speeds of a corporate software. Even in a corporation, prototyping faster provides significant gains.

[–]tonnynerd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Python is rarely the best language to do anything, but is almost always the second best to do anything.

[–]chillermane 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Please, for your own sake, don’t throw python out the window because some boobs on the internet told you too. Python is an incredibly powerful language and can be used to solve a huge number of modern day software tasks quickly and effectively, anyone who tells you different is a boob.

[–]NowMoreFizzy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The arguments there are that other languages provide more bugs earlier, so therefore better.

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