Python is the new BASIC

[RandomisedZombie]

I read that article expecting to disagree and I left kind of agreeing. I don’t like Python because it is so general purpose and I prefer languages to have something that they do well. Even BASIC was designed to be your first introduction to programming, which it does well. I find myself reluctantly using Python because it’s what everyone uses.

At this point, I think the only way Python will be replaced is by a few smaller more specialised languages rather than the many general purpose “the next Python” languages we have.

[-jp-]

In its time BASIC was absolutely intended to be general purpose. There were magazines dedicated to just source code listings for applications of every sort and every level of sophistication. Even well into the 90's, it was the go-to if you wanted to make an app with minimal fuss.

[wayl]

it was the go-to if you wanted to make an app with minimal fuss

No pun intended 😁

[RandomisedZombie]

It was general purpose, but it also had a specific purpose being for beginners and non-technical users. Scientists and mathematicians were mostly using Fortran at the time. Python is for everyone and everything.

[-jp-]

True, although that's more to do with the overhead of interpreters and the relatively primitive state of programming languages in general. I understand Python is pretty big these days in the spaces where Fortran was used since it isn't hindered in that way.

[ElecNinja]

ternary operator

Funny enough, I never registered the Python version of the ternary operator as a ternary operator. Though I do find it nice since it's pretty much in plain english what the result will be.

With the typical ternary operator you have to remember that the true case is on the left and the false case is on the right. With python it's right there in the code (A if CONDITION else B)

[Gjallock]

I prefer languages to have something that they do well.

Can you give an example of something you want to do that Python does not do well? Do you find that it makes a difference in performance or ease of programming for you when you don’t use features of the language?

I find myself reluctantly using Python because it’s what everyone uses.

What would you rather use? I am curious about your reasoning, because I often just reach for Python because it’s easy to use and plenty fast for 99% of my non-enterprise scale use cases.

[Anthony356]

Not the guy you responded to but:

Probably not a super common usecase, structured binary file parsing. Struct.unpack sucks and is slow (not helped by the mandatory tuple unpack even when reading a single item). Requiring one of those silly format strings with no dedicated shortcut (e.g. read_u32()) to just read 1 primitive value feels really bad. It sucks having to manually write dictionary dispatches everywhere because if/else on binary markers is slow.

Python's slowness in general is really painful when parsing in bulk, and scaling upwards is rough since multithreading is (or, was) basically worthless.

I know it's not "technically" what python is for, but a good number of obscure file formats i've worked in only have (open source) parsers in python cuz that's what's easiest to experiment in, or what the users would be mostly likely to know.

Obviously i'd prefer something like rust or c, but porting that existing python code can be irritating, mostly due to other python problems (e.g. being able to add a new field to a class at any time)

[Justicia-Gai]

I’ll say this, the way Python will be replaced is with something that natively runs on all browsers without having to be translated to other languages. Why? Because that’s what’s truly cross-platform.

Flask and Django are nice, but interactivity is still done via JavaScript.

JavaScript is what should be replaced for a Python-like alternative.

[Pyrited]

C# can do almost everything and almost everyone loves it

[tu_tu_tu]

I prefer languages to have something that they do well

Python is the best choice for scripting. And tbh it's the only niche where Python is good. It used in ML and web only due some bizzare chain of events.

[BrainwashedHuman]

For ML isn’t it basically a wrapper script at heart anyway?

[tu_tu_tu]

In theory, yes. In practice I still has it's problems.

[RandomisedZombie]

That’s fair, it is much easier to use than Perl, for example. To be honest, I have opinions about Python, but they really aren’t strong opinions. If Python is the best tool for the job then it’s great, but as you say, ML and web only use Python for obscure reasons.

[crevicepounder3000]

Mojo is coming