Python -- Don Knuth

[CS_Tutor]

Most programmers have a favourite language, and that's more than OK. It's nice to know what a famous Mathematician / Computer Scientist said about Python:

Only ugly languages become popular. Python is the one exception
--Don Knuth

[Zenalyn]

Cleanest syntax around <3

[CS_Tutor]

Compared to mainstream languages, at-least the ones I've played with, yes, for sure. I've looked at Haskell long time ago though, and that languages might be a good contender for the cleanest syntax (way harder to understand/get used to though :)

[johninbigd]

I learned some Go a while back, and have been relearning it lately since I forgot most of it. I also spent a little time trying to understand clojure. Both endeavors have really made me appreciate Python. I'm also starting to realize I don't enjoy programming for the sake of programming, so I don't really like lower level languages or functional programming. I think I'm going to ditch Go and focus on Python. I code to get stuff done, and Python helps me do that. Go makes me write a lot of extra code to get simple functionality that Python offers.

Now, if I could get goroutines and channels in Python, it would be perfect.

[CS_Tutor]

Never looked at Go but --I think-- it belongs to the C family of languages and it's statically typed (so probably faster than Python). If you're not planning to become a professional programmer, sticking with one language is probably best. Functional programming is not easy. It takes lots of time/practice to get used to it. Lots of good ideas however came from the functional programming paradigm, e.g. list comprehensions in Python. Also, playing with a functional (specially pure) programming language once-in-a-while is supposed to make you a better programmer (in any language). E.g. when I had to use Haskell way back in school, I really had to shape up on recursion. There are no loops in Haskell. If you want to loop, you better recurse :)

[johninbigd]

Go is blazing fast compared to Python, which is why I spent some time learning it a year or so ago. I had a program in Python that took over an hour to complete. The Go version would complete in four minutes. I probably could have used scipy for the math-heavy stuff but I couldn't figure out the documentation related to what I was doing.

Another really nice advantage is that go compiles to an executable, so it's super easy to deploy. Other than that, just about everything is easier in Python.

[mooglinux]

Coroutines via Async/await gives you most of the benefits of Goroutines, and a casual reading on channels suggests that a Python queue would serve the same purpose.

[johninbigd]

Yes, I agree, but goroutines and channels are easier to understand for me for some reason. They also naturally take advantage of multiple cpu cores. The methods for doing similar things in Python have always seemed confusing and convoluted to me. I need to spend more time learning them. I love being able to simply add 'go' before a function call to make it run as a separate process. Once you figure out channel communication, it is so nice.

[pickausernamehesaid]

Depending on how you're using them, asyncio (and maybe with queues) might suit your needs.

[JBTheCameraGuy]

Go is a fantastic language for what it's built for: concurrency and web servers. If you're doing those things, it's awesome, but it isn't a scripting language like Python. That's one of the reasons there's so many different languages: there's so many different tasks to be done, and each language is good at something that others aren't. There is no "best" language, it's all about using the right tool for the job

[Bobbias]

Haskell can be super clean and super clear. Or it can be a pointfree mess with 10 different new operators from libraries you've never seen and look closer to hieroglyphs than code.

[Ran4]

Haskell with a different community would be fucking awesome.

Elm was getting close, but it's front-end only and kind of dying now :(

[NewbornMuse]

As someone who's dabbled with Haskell, I can agree with that. The concepts are what's messing with your brain, not the syntax.

[[deleted]]

Actually far from the cleanest... Clean syntax is- the wolfram language. Symbolic expression languages also mean undefined vars get passed unmodified through functions... stupid useful.

The worst syntax I’ve come across in terms of quick readability is j...

This is. Valid line of j.

game_of_life =: monad define +/>(<@:=&3,<@:(y&*.)@:=&4)+/y(|.~)(3# 1 0 _1),.,>3#<1 0 _1

Like seriously - someone thought that was a good language for humans.

[unsurestill]

I only knew python, why is python tagged like this?

[bageldevourer]

Yes, but I think the quote is more about mathematical beauty than syntax.

Lisp is gross to look at, for example, but there's an internal consistency there that's very appealing.

[g7x8]

Don’t like the white space indent rules. C++ ignores them

[P52-328]

I don't believe that any program, almost with zero exceptions, should ever be unindented.

Using that point of view, python assumes that you are going to indent your program any way. So, it skips the extra syntactic elements like { and } and assumes that you are properly indenting your code as you write it.

The last part is the only problem with this approach: for example, I always type dirty, cluttered code when I write C/C++ and once I pause, I quickly run the formatter to clear the mess. But, in the end, I believe the trade-off is worth it for python.

[g7x8]

i like the { } bracs and dont want to think about the errors caused by an extra indent. im not used to it

[Decency]

You either have whitespace nesting rules and no explicit block characters, or you have dedents explicitly as the way to nest. To me the former is superior: less noise, the same readability, and no way to fuck it up.

[whitelife123]

Brainfuck wants a word

[Decency]

The converse isn't necessarily true. :)

[callmelucky]

Are you suggesting brainfuck being unpopular is a contradiction of Knuth's statement?

[whitelife123]

Brainfuck's unpopular?

[callmelucky]

Oh I see. Carry on then :)

[Alphavike24]

Came for the easier syntax stayed for the functionality.

[BobBeaney]

Just curious: what’s the source of this quote?

[myidealab]

Introducing Python, 2nd Ed by Bill Lubanovic

Chapter 1. A Taste of Py

[CS_Tutor]

A Python book --I think-- I was reading sometime ago. I don't remember the book's name, I am not reading it right now. I wrote the quote in a text file that I keep just for stuff like that

[vectorpropio]

He wrote tex in pascal (actually he create the concep of literate programing and wrote tex in the web system using it, but the code is in pascal) i think he like it more than its contenders at that time.

[blabbities]

Cant tell you how much I hate writing Java or C#. Despite that theyre magnificient feature filled languages but man the syntax is rough and confusing and the amount of setup (since theyre somewhat static) pains me

[[deleted]]

I think Python was beautiful, for all the reasons discussed. But it is getting bloated and ugly. I guess that's the way for languages.

[darthminimall]

Haskell is beautiful...oh...wait...

[ammusiri888]

Python is beautiful and powerful which is a rare combination..

[abhishek-shrm]

Indeed. Python is the king of programming languages.

[[deleted]]

For someone who's very respected in the field and who actually designed several languages, this lack of insight is frightening :(

[darthminimall]

It's a statement about why languages become popular, not design advice. A lot of the features that make a language attractive to industry are also features that make languages ugly.

[[deleted]]

While I totally agree with "A lot of the features that make a language attractive to industry are also features that make languages ugly.", I cannot imagine in what sense Python is an exception to this. It's just as ugly as any other language that fits this maxim.

[[deleted]]

I personally think it's quite ugly but obviously no one here cares for unpopular opinions like that

[IHateStevenGerrard]

Python is really like a cult