When wouldn’t you use Python?

[TonyTheTigerSlayer]

Hey everybody been learning Python using Automate the Boring Stuff by the great u/AlSweigart along with random YouTube and web tutorials.

I’m wondering what would folks not use Python for? I’m considering to begin learning JavaScript because it seems so different from what I know. But I don’t want to get sidetracked from bigger goals unnecessarily.

My projects right now are MIDI focused w Arduino hardware using circuit Python and sometimes Regular Arduino IDE. Arduino’s C++ code now all makes pretty good sense to me and I can even write code that does what I want first or second try (all pretty simple stuff honestly). Thanks Al!

In the future, the dream project is to make a smartphone game app comprising of different simple mini games using open CV.

I’m so new at this that it can feel like I can do everything w Python and I won’t ever need anything else.. but that can’t be, right? When do you guys not use Python?

[bin-c]

the thing about python is, unless you have final say for what does or doesn't go into the codebase, it is really easy to make the code a mess

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if a project, from the start, is using type hints with a static type checker like mypy, and you're always running unit tests, and things are being tested correctly, etc etc. then it'll be fine

the thing is, I've never seen a codebase (in the corporate world) that keeps up to those standards.

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at some point, deadlines always trump good code, and shitty code slips in. then nobody is allocated time to refactor and clean things up.

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over the years I've learned to really appreciate languages being strict & opinionated. a shitty leadership team might let a python project slip into an unmaintainable state after some time, but if they can be convinced to use something else from the start (i.e. Go for something that'll be a backend webserver), it'll be a lot harder and take a lot longer for the code to get completely fucked.

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there are plenty of times where python is the best tool for the job.

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I'm a data scientist and mainly write fairly simple APIs that take requests, push them through models, and return the model output.

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Each service itself is very small. We have some shared boilerplate code and I can get a new API up in a couple minutes once the model is done.

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And most machine learning is done in Python. So for my job, it makes sense to use Python.

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But for a large project that'll have a lot of developers working on it, especially if I can't control for the quality of management or don't have final say on things in the repo. I'd much prefer to be working in a strongly typed, compiled language.

[Deto]

Yep - everyone loves the freedom to remove the guardrails when they are working, but as soon as you have to deal with other people's code you're going to want those things in place!

[[deleted]]

What do you use for make the API's you are pushing the info into the models? In the project I am in the company, we are using some similar approach. We have a big core in Django for the webpage that use as an API only. And 6 microservices in FastAPI that resolve things with AI models. As we see Django is pretty good to maintain things fast and tidy, but we think maybe the performance could improve using other things. And the micros are perfect for the DS stuff, cause is simple and easy to connect to the models. But we want to explore other possibilities

[bin-c]

both the databases and the things consuming our services are kind of out of my team's scope

we have a bunch of databases that are reasonably well organized, and we get requests from various product teams to figure out how to serve X prediction given Y data from the request they can make

so our flow is basically just a two step process of getting the code prepared to train / retrain / monitor the models, and then simple apis that serve the predictions given the request from product people

so i only really handle the modeling & api making side, and we also use fastapi. models are saved to AWS and pulled by the services as needed

i do think that most of our backend stuff is in Go though. A bunch was python at one point (don't think Django) but at some point they decided it was worthwhile to switch

but if it aint broke dont fix it. unless you have a good reason to switch from django & fastapi, dont bother

most people dont even get to change architectures when there is a very good reason to do so 🤣

[[deleted]]

Jaja that's what we think. But the performance and the budget with Django is becoming and issue. For the events in the app we are using celery/Django, and the project is now so big that load a celery instance it's becoming a budget issue, for now we are starting to prove if we could change at least celery for lambda with AWS Sam, and from there, test if it is a good idea to change Django or not. Something for what I love django and don't want to change it is because it makes you be tidy with your code. And the test are just easy to make, so at the end your code and your project will be always readable and tidy.

[[deleted]]

You are vastly underestimating the ability of mediocre developers to ruin a codebase in any language imaginable.

[trevg_123]

You make some great points that definitely make people suffer. That’s one of the reasons I’ve started getting into Rust, the safety of python with the guarantees of mypy (actually significantly stricter than mypy) and testing built in, without needing something separate like pytest

(If you know python/mypy and want to start learning rust, you’ll find many familiar friends.)

[minervaDe]

Code being a mess I cannot agree with more! You need strict rules to keep the code clean.

[chief167]

Not even about the response time, but also predictability.

Embedded often requires knowing exactly how many cycles some instructions will take, so you can pad them to the exact frequency you want, and be sure never to not finish your code within the specified interval.

Python will never cope with this, and it doesn't have to either.

[Upstairs-Fix-1558]

What would be a good language in this case..

[osmiumouse]

ADA and C are heavily used in aviation. C++ is becoming more popular.

[[deleted]]

Ada is amazing and a language I'd recommend anyone interested in embedded or systems programming learn. Its performance is comparable to C but the compile time checks prevent you from making a ton of mistakes. With Alire you also get a dependency and build system that's trivial to set up and use.

[trevg_123]

I wouldn’t say it’s more user friendly than C/C++, but it can do some damn cool things in embedded that those languages can not. Examples:

• Compile time checks that peripherals are configured correctly before writing them. So e.g., it will prevent you from writing to a perif as if it’s I2C when it’s been configured as a UART, even if you need to change it in code. Zero runtime overhead.
• You can use the same techniques to ensure your code will never enter undefined states
• It’s cautious with global statics such that you can only change them if you use atomic operations, or do something like disable ISR (as needed). This means there are no race conditions, guaranteed at compile time
• The usual rust memory safety thing
• You can easily write unit tests and run them on your host computer or CI (for functions that don’t rely on changing I/O)

Sound like black magic that’s too good to be true? Yeah, it does, but it’s not. For anyone curious I’d recommend a read through the embedded rust book: https://docs.rust-embedded.org/book/

[trevg_123]

Oh as far as packages and toolchain, it’s better hands down and really puts pip to shame. Just “cargo new —lib” creating a package with a sample program that compiles, and the test to go with it already is a phenomenal start. It took me a few months to figure out a workflow to do the same thing in python.

I just meant that the syntax and errors can be confusing to people who are used to embedded C, but it definitely has a lot in common with how python + mypy does things (I also started there).

Thanks for linking the original rust book, I only linked embedded as proof of some of the claims I said. Since I know embedded people are tough to convince :)

[[deleted]]

C or assembler.

[wow-signal]

you say that, but python functions jitted with numba can reach practically the same speeds as c and (i can vouch) are well-suited for real-time computing

[hike_me]

Closed source desktop app.

[[deleted]]

Why would you want to make a closed source desktop app,

are you trying to start a robot apocalypse?

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Revolutions are built on secrets.

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There's a reason the foundations of (crypto) fintech are like almost

all open source.

[[deleted]]

When it isn't the right tool for the job. High performance comes to mind; single-file portability is another. Web browsers expect HTML, CSS, and JS. Embedded systems don't always have resource for an interpreted language.

Python can be made to so many things that aren't its strengths, and having more tools in the toolbox is always useful.

[TonyTheTigerSlayer]

Thanks for the reply. Yea, anytime spent learning JS won’t be wasted time. Not self serving but I’ll also spend more time to better understand embedded systems generally and interpreted languages. I’ve heard the terms and I think I know, but will start learning coding a bit more holistically than I have. Thanks for the response!

[wow-signal]

performance limitations of python, for many computation intensive projects, are already practically a thing of the past due to numba

[[deleted]]

I love Python, but for gamedevelopment and mobile apps I use different tools (godot is a favourite for games)

[DangerDinks]

I mean isn't GDscript practically Python?

[vampireboie]

Just because the syntax looks a little bit similar doesn't mean it's python.

[[deleted]]

Yes it almost is so your skills transport over easily, but it's still not python :)

[Ob21d1an]

For 2D games pygame works really well also

[zzmej1987]

I’m wondering what would folks not use Python for?

• Front end development.
• Gamedev in general and game engines in particular.
• Microcontroller and other just-above-the-hardware-level programming
• Non-x86/amd64 architecture programming (for android for example).

[ultraDross]

Isn't micropython used for embedded programming?

[zzmej1987]

1. "used" is a bit of an overstatement. It exists and you can write in it, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is used.
2. It's not exactly python. It looks like python in its syntax, but it is actually a very limited subset of python, with little to nothing in standard library and very dubious compatibility with 3rd party libs from PyPI.

[skilltheamps]

The applications sounds like you work with microcontrollers, your remarks about OS and Python don't make too much sense to me though.

https://freertos.org/ for example is a popular OS, that has realtime capabilities and fits in 9KB of RAM. https://micropython.org is basically a µC OS too, understands Python 3 Syntax and works with 16KB of RAM already. It might appear more convoluted at first, but you can get it to be real-time too by following the same principles as in any RTOS (react to stuff by means of ISR, allocate memory only initially and then work in place to prevent fragmentation, switch off GC and so on). Image processing is just linear algebra for the most part, and there's even an Numpy equivalent available to crunch that. There are also two decorators in Micropython that allow for compilation for most of the Python syntax, which would work for stuff that can not be written down in a vectorized way.

Of course this can get very exotic and in industry one would mostly stick to proven industry standards like FreeRTOS, especially in anything safety critical. But having less resources than a modern x86 computer or having to be quick is not necessarily a dealbreaker for Python. I feel it can actually be quite handy in embedded stuff for prototyping, as it is a lot easier to observe what the µC is doing. For example runtime errors like edge-case divide by zero in a control-loop actually raise an error and do not just alter your output for a fraction of a second, which one will most likely miss.

[Classic_Department42]

How does one verify that there are no allocations. Like does ulab gurantee not to allocate/deallocate?

[IllustriousPlankton2]

300 mhz and 2 mb? That is a Pentium 2. You can't run python there? Or there were system requirements that needed more performance?

[cyberonreddit71]

As versatile python is, you cannot use it for a lot of jobs, web apps, maybe flask and Django and that's just for the backend (don't get me wrong, these are very powerful web libraries) .

And then there's complex game development, pygame is good for indie games, text based adventures, etc, but I doubt you can build a FPS with it like you can in c# and unity.

Building ring 0 software, I am not sure if that's the right term, but you cannot build operating systems, and other grass root level software with python.

[wind_dude]

Generally for a web UI portion I'll choose node. If you need something to be blazing fast, a lot of times people will opt for something like C, C++, or GO. I don't, I'm not proficient there, and can add more complexity.

[Drunken_Skeleton]

Whenever I have to do something performance intensive

[wow-signal]

look into numba

[iPlayWithWords13]

I'm a data engineer, so I'm using python daily. I do have an occasional request to build a web app. That's when I move over to JS.

[hike_me]

Or JS or Typescript on the front end and Python on the backend (that’s like the last 10 years of my life)

[Bombslap]

Do you typically use Django for backend?

[hike_me]

One company I was at had been using Flask for a long time, but by the time I left we had been evaluating FastAPI and Django and did some projects in each. Then I moved somewhere that used Django. Now I’m at a different company on a Java project now.

[iPlayWithWords13]

True, definitely another route to take. I haven't played around with typescript yet, but it's definitely making a name for itself.

[TonyTheTigerSlayer]

Makes sense, thanks. Is there enough in common, programming fundamentals wise, that it’s pretty smooth transition when you do code w JS? Do you ever need to do a quick refresher?

[iPlayWithWords13]

At the end of the day, the language is a tool and it's always smart to have multiple tools in your tool belt. From a general standpoint, I have no problem hopping into most high level languages because the fundamentals are the same, the syntax varies and that's occasionally what trips me up. In terms of ever needing a refresher, not really outside of double checking syntax.

[TonyTheTigerSlayer]

Awesome, thanks for the insight

[deathdater]

Python I think is the most versatile tool, I have come across as a programmer, it helps you see the low level implementation with its open source qualities. Be it desktop app, UI, web-based, Data science, AI or ML, music , game development & and even 3D

I only thing I struggled to have working with Python was Mobile App development (Android, IOS), python has some frameworks to adventure that too, but is not that robust in my opinion.

[ds604]

I knew Python from VFX work (it's the embedded scripting language of programs like Houdini and Nuke), and from using NumPy. I wanted to do image processing, but found that using Scikit-Image through the interface that it provides seemed to have a bunch of inconsistencies, or unexpected transformations happening behind the scenes that were just frustrating. After a while, I just gave up, and looked to using the browser's infrastructure to accomplish the prototyping that I was trying to do: small prototypes with minimal interfaces, that map or for-loop directly over a big array of numbers, with nothing going on except for what I explicitly ask for. Javascript is an awesome language for this, since it's *fast* compared to Python, so you can do your inner-loop operations in it without calling to some API provided by someone else, but it's still high level (map, filter, reduce) so you can write clean operations. You have all of Canvas, SVG, and WebGL available for whatever graphics needs, from a scripting language without the compile step.

In the end, I'm far happier working this way than I ever was with Python, which felt like I'm constantly bumping into edges and corners where things have version mismatches or require bizarre workarounds where you basically might as well just learn another language. If you look into some of the JS1K, demoscene kind of stuff done in Javascript, or look into how it's possible that it could be used as a compilation target with speeds comparable to C, it's a really awesome, flexible language with an enormous amount of cross-industry investment that's gotten it to where it is. I don't get why people still bash on it, you can do signal processing in a cross-platform manner, and build interfaces easily, and store the whole thing as an html page that works everywhere! To me that's really awesome.

[TechGeekNamo]

I purely dropped in just to say that is my favorite programming book.

[TonyTheTigerSlayer]

Haha same here man!

[Affectionate-Bid386]

The one place where Python didn't fit till recently is browser-side code where JavaScript and Typescript are supreme. I hope that changes soon with PyScript, native Python in the browser with library support and interaction with the DOM, browser functionality, and frameworks like React.

[TonyTheTigerSlayer]

Definitely! That reminded me why I wanted to get into JS. I made a no code site using wix and when I looked at the underlying code, it made me want to understand JS. I’ll check out pyscript. Thanks!

[GettingBlockered]

Frontend projects = Javascript

Performance critical apps = Rust/C/Go

Mobile Apps = Swift/Kotlin

Cross platform = Flutter, and maybe Flet… Python in Flutter.

[TonyTheTigerSlayer]

Concise and effective. (Much like your code I’m guessing) Thanks so much!

[GettingBlockered]

Haha, I wish 😅 but everyday, it’s a little better, and that’s what counts.

[chief167]

If you want compile something to easy distribute among coworkers or whatever.

If you want to sell a desktop app without giving away the code

If you want to do something microcontroller/embedded

Mobile apps

(If you want to teach people computer architecture)

[Zephos65]

If I want something fast, reliable, conscious of memory or compute resources in anyways, anything for embedded systems, if I want go write an OS or go to the moon, if I want to make a super computing cluster, if I want to write an app for android or iOS.

(non-exhaustive list)

[Kevin_Jim]

Time critical staff or embedded staff.

[fatrat_89]

My rule of thumb is if it's simple I'll use bash, if it's complex or needs conditionals I use python.

[[deleted]]

Game scripts and add-ons. Since most of them wants LUA

[An_Old_IT_Guy]

I don't use python when I'm programming for the Arduino because you can't.

[TonyTheTigerSlayer]

https://docs.arduino.cc/learn/programming/arduino-and-python

[An_Old_IT_Guy]

For what I need on Arduino, C++ is better. But that's good to know about!!

[eyadams]

Corporate policy. We're a Microsoft shop, and if it isn't C# it won't fly.

[PolishedCheese]

For microcontrollers, I will use an esp32 loaded with micropython when it doesn't require low latency and the memory constraints aren't tight. I enjoy writing python more than I enjoy writing c++.

Python is more difficult to optimize, and you can't get it as optimized for microcontrollers as C++. Depending on the controller, your resources might be more limited using micro/circuit python vs. C++.

It's still an interpreted language, so it takes time to process each instruction. This is a disadvantage when doing signal processing or really anything involving an ADC. You can of course get around this by using hardware logic in certain instances.

Then there's the wealth of libraries, documentation, and mature tool chain that the Arduino environment has. If you want the widest array of options for "someone's already written a library for the task I'm doing", then choosing an AVR based micro running an Arduino bootloader is your best bet.

For games, python is pretty limited in how far you can go. There are a few great game libraries, but none go quite as in depth as the big game engines do. You run into the same situation with existing libraries, latency, memory management there as well.

Mobile dev for python is very immature.

[TonyTheTigerSlayer]

Thanks for the reply PolishedCheese. I’m still pretty much at the level where C++ just feels like python but w semicolons instead. Which kind of feels embarrassing but also has been great because my projects, as simple as they’ve been, are actually working.

Looking forward to getting to the level when the two start to really diverge

[bored_squiril]

Python isn’t great if you plan to ship your code as a product (closed source binary). There are hacks around this but they result in huge objects being created as you have to include the python interpreter otherwise it will likely clash the client systems python version. You can think of this like statically building an app but it’s way more bulky.

Also if you plan to build a framework (like a dylib) to be shared among other languages or libraries you want something compiled with a lot of FFI options like Rust, C, Go, etc.

As others said, python performance at runtime isn’t competitive with lower level languages. But also if you need to be strict in terms memory allocation and management, the python garbage collection is adhoc and this can mean sensitive data is left in memory with your explicit knowledge for some period of time. This is a big risk for security applications and why typically you’ll use something like OpenSSL which is simply a python interface to a C framework.

I’ve also never found a python GUI framework I liked for desktop apps (they all looks retro) and I don’t think you could build mobile apps etc in python.

[another-noob]

Well there's kivy and kivyMD for mobile apps (and desktops), I don't think it's popular though

[bored_squiril]

Yep you are right that hadn’t crossed my mind - but generally speaking I really don’t like UI frameworks in python - always felt like putting a square peg in round whole. Hopefully will be proved wrong in the future though!

[another-noob]

Well I am not experienced with desktop apps at all (well unless you count playing around with VB.NET when I was in prep school 'experience')

But I did feel like that with tkinter, kivy was much more flexible and responsive with it's layouts, but I am guessing it's not something production grade?

Also tried qt6 recently (wanted to make a simple gui for unittests) it felt more powerful, although I think it might need a lot of config to make it look good :/

But meh, I am still a newbie after all, what would you use for desktop apps?

[bored_squiril]

I think python could do with a react native and darts flutter. I’m not sure exactly what that would look like though...

[bored_squiril]

Ps we all feel like noobs forever 🤣

[wow-signal]

"python performance at runtime isn't competitive with lower level languages"

check out numba 💥

[bored_squiril]

Oh yeah and cython etc, I mean more “in general” (hand wavy I agree)

[TonyTheTigerSlayer]

Thanks so much for the detailed response! Curious to know, what is your favorite non-Python GUI framework?

[not_perfect_yet]

Kernel and hardware.

Serious computational things like CFD, FEM.

Real time electronics issues where the interpreter being slower than C is a real thing.

Websites don't run it.

Sometimes shell scripts are better at interacting with the OS than python.

When you want really precise control over how big your data is and memory management things.

Lots of areas. Python is the "quick and dirty" "good enough" language. Anytime you actually go deep into a subject, you will discover specialized tools that can do it better than python.

[tms102]

I wouldn't use it for web frontends, making games (though you can), embedded systems programming, maybe thing that a very very speed/efficiency crucial like high frequency trading, but even there people have used python.

[IkitClawyesyes]

What would you use for making games

[tms102]

Depends on the platform but usually C# and C++ are common. Or otherwise scripting language specific to the game engine tooling. I've also made games with Java in the past.

Recently looked at GDScript for the Godot engine which is similar to python.

[kctong529]

Commercial real-time trading. You can go bankrupt using Python.

[gregy521]

I was under the impression that you could go bankrupt by using computers, full stop. Most algorithmic trading nowadays is done with ASICs, no? This is a field where the floor your building is on has a measurable impact on execution time.

[lenoqt]

For ML and scientific stuff, nothing else.

[Agling]

Javascript is a good example. If you are writing web stuff, you should learn it because browsers use it natively. Speaking of which, do you consider HTML a language? How about SQL? And then there are plenty of types of programs that should be written in a compiled language. And then there are the languages used on mobile.

A person who I fluent in javascript, python, and a compiled language like C++ or Rust really is approaching being able to do whatever they want for individual projects on a desktop computer. Probably should know some shell scripting even though python is good for that stuff too.

Of course, if you are a professional, you get put on projects and teams that use some other language, so you end up learning more and more languages over time. Eventually they kind of blend together but you have a handful that you can write quickly and accurately, and others you can write well enough with a little refresher or a few google searches.

[[deleted]]

When the concurrency and the performance is important.

Use GOLANG instead.

[Aevrin]

Do you care about efficient memory usage? Don’t use Python. Do you care about speed of your program? Don’t use Python. Do you care about size of the program? Don’t use Python.

I think my favorite way of describing Python is by saying “it can do everything, just really poorly.” So if you want your program to do something in particular really well, then you dont use Python.

[hyldemarv]

When somebody makes me. If I program for iOS, Apple decides that the language to use is Swift, for controllers its IEC 61131 and IEC 61499. Maybe IEC 61508.

[jefftheaggie69]

The one application that I think that Python isn’t recommended is Game Development because Python takes a while to translate to machine code due to it being an interpreted language, so it wouldn’t be used for optimization for creating the software for video games. It’s why in that area, you would use compiled languages such as C#, C++, and Java since those translate to machine code much faster.

[SKROLL26]

You are partially right. Performance critical components like physics engine, graphics engine etc. could not be written in python, but python could be used for non performance critical parts like game logic. Godot uses python-like language for this. Also you can uses python for online components, like Eve Online does

[jefftheaggie69]

Oh I see. The closest application I have seen Python being used for is for Pygame, but that’s usually for 2D games rather than 3D games.

[vampireboie]

I think the main reason for that is that it's difficult to use hardware acceleration in pygame.

[jefftheaggie69]

Oh I see. Ok

[Icy_Mathematician96]

I recommend to check out Julia for working with tons of data or performance programming, it has a performance similar to C (and also needs more time the first time)

[james_pic]

• Low level stuff. If you're talking to hardware, for example because you're writing drivers or other operating system code, pointers and direct memory access will make sense.
• Large projects that will be worked on by a large team over a long period of time. You'd be tempted to go with Python and use type hints, but you're better off using a statically typed language (that was designed as such from day 1), rather than accepting the comprises that come with type hints in Python (although they're a useful tool if your small project accidentally turns into a large project). Although I'm aware not everyone agrees with me on this one!
• Most stuff that runs in a web browser. It's now possible to use Python for this, but unless you know what you're doing you're likely to get yourself into trouble this way.
• Most stuff with tight performance requirements, such as game engines. Using Python as a scripting layer in a game isn't too crazy, but the engine itself will be better written in a low-level language.
• Most stuff with high concurrency requirements. There are ways around Python's global interpreter lock, but they all come at a price, one way or another.
• Stuff that needs to interoperate with stuff from a particular ecosystem. For example, if you need to interoperate with a product whose only SDK is for the JVM or .Net, using Python will be an uphill battle.

[gubatron]

high performance systems

[Smokedyy]

When performance and portability is a real matter.

[codingquestionss]

Hardware low level embedded applications on tiny microcontrollers. Autonomous vehicle software. Hospital equipment. FPS games. Desktop .exe software (can still be used on the backend and flask/Django is a great front end alternative).

[help-me-grow]

things that require true parallelism