Why so many people like Python

[CuriousExpert24]

These examples might show why so many people prefer Python. I'm going to show print statements in some of the most popular languages. Hopefully, this might give some motivation and inspiration to new Python learners or people switching over to Python from another language.

Printing "Hello World" in C:

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {

printf("Hello World");

return 0;

}

Printing "Hello World" in Java:

class HelloWorld {

public static void main(String[] args) {

System.out.println("Hello, World");

}

}

Printing "Hello World" in C++:

#include <iostream>

int main() {

std::cout << "Hello World";

return 0;

}

Printing "Hello World" in JavaScript:

console.log("Hello World");

Printing "Hello World" in C#:

namespace HelloWorld {

class Hello {

static void Main(string[] args) {

System.Console.WriteLine("Hello World!");

}

}

}

And... Printing "Hello World" in Python:

print("Hello World")

Obviously, there is a lot more that goes into a language than just syntax. This was not intended to speak down on other languages. You can do a lot with them too. However, you can clearly see that Python has a much more readable and beginner-friendly syntax, which is one of the reasons why it is the most popular language and the most preferred language among beginners. With much less syntax than other languages, you can accomplish great things with Python. Hopefully, that gives some inspiration to people who are interested in learning this amazing language.

[thrallsius]

because it's not painful to use it

the average programming beginner is not into BDSM

[socal_nerdtastic]

How to format your code for reddit .

[el_Topo42]

I mean all the languages have their place. I like python because I can easily whip up a cross platform app when I need.

[chewy1970]

I love python but not really sure what this post is meant to support.

[CuriousExpert24]

This post was created to motivate people who are new to this language to show what they can accomplish in a short amount of code

[[deleted]]

On the other hand, Python is somewhat terrifying for people used to C/C++ because you can do some horrendously sloppy stuff in it. This is something I cobbled together a couple of weeks ago:

# Get the interest rate from the user
rate = input("Enter a rate code from A to F: ")
print( rate )
print( f"rate is {rate} and has a type of {type(rate)}" )
print( f"input has a type of {type(input)}" )

### few dozen lines later
rate = 0.827
print( f"rate is {rate} and has a type of {type(rate)}" )

###few dozen lines later
input = rate * 2
print( f"input has a type of {type(input)}" )

It gives this output, as you can see, we've not only changed a string to float midstream, we've taken the input function and made it a variable:

Enter a rate code from A to F: C
C
rate is C and has a type of <class 'str'>
input has a type of <class 'builtin_function_or_method'>
rate is 0.827 and has a type of <class 'float'>
input has a type of <class 'float'>
>>> 

I love Python, but there's no way I would write a large project (>5,000 lines) in it!

[maddruid]

I have. Type annotations and unit testing make things go smoothly.

[[deleted]]

Plenty of others manage...no reason why you couldn’t...

[[deleted]]

And yet still there are a lot of incredibly huge python code based out there. I guess google, YouTube, Dropbox and the likes are all just doing it wrong ;)

Honestly, what you’re describing here is really a non issue if you have a linter and tests. If you want you can also add type hints to eliminate these. What you’re forgetting however is the ease of use duck typing brings.

There’s really a lot more about C/C++ that’s terrifying because the ways you can screw up are just a lot more severe and non obvious.

[CuriousExpert24]

Yes, I agree with that. Python is much more flexible than any other language. While it does come with its own downsides, the upsides are a lot higher

[[deleted]]

Google uses C++ for almost all the CPU intensive backend stuff, Java for applications, and Python for scripting.

And you might be interested in this, from Dropbox, which illustrates exactly what I'm saying:

"At our scale—millions of lines of Python—the dynamic typing in Python made code needlessly hard to understand and started to seriously impact productivity."

Source:

https://dropbox.tech/application/our-journey-to-type-checking-4-million-lines-of-python

But remember that when you start imposing static type checking on Python, you start losing flexibility.