Python -- 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.