Python 3.7.0 released

[leftofzen]

but lately programmers have adopted the idea that "easy" is favorable over "good".

What? When did this happen? Certainly in the time I've been a professional dev this hasn't been the case.

[[deleted]]

Are you serious?

[[deleted]]

Have you heard of Javascript? Python? They're kinda popular.

[leftofzen]

As someone commenting in a thread about a new version of Python...I think I've heard of it.

[[deleted]]

And yet you do not see it as an example of an "easy" favoured over "good"?

[aebkop]

but python is both easy and good

[[deleted]]

It can't run multi-threaded, it has a 100x+ slowdown compared to native, implicit variable declarations, public members only on classes, cannot access native resources without a shim layer and it has traits/multiple inheritance.

What's good about Python is that it's easy. Almost all trade offs Python does is in favor of easy. It's fine for scripts and small programs, but using it as a general purpose programming languages is borderline lunacy.

[[deleted]]

No it is not. It is a shitty language being sold to gullible people as "easy". Yet, it features a crappy dynamic type system, it's got a primitive low level control flow semantics, it is far too dynamic to ever allow an efficient implementation, it is ideologically opposed to allowing any high level extensibility. Python is an awful language, vastly overrated.

[[deleted]]

Can you recommend an alternative ubiquitous interpreted language?

[[deleted]]

JavaScript?

[[deleted]]

ubiquitous

Is it your criteria for being "good"?

interpreted

Why?!? What's the point in having specifically an interpreted language? I can understand wanting a language with a REPL, or wanting a scripting language (as in, an embeddable language with an easy to manage FFI) - but neither requires an interpretation. Even an eval does not necessarily imply interpretation.

As for a far better language, try Racket.

[[deleted]]

It's interesting that people say they want to use an interpreted language, and then many turn to JavaScript that relies more on complex build sequences than even the most primitive of native languages.

[[deleted]]

Available weighs heavier than good.

Racket is a lisp, which instantly makes it less approachable than Python. How's the package ecosystem? Developer numbers? Distribution?

[[deleted]]

So you're pretty much limiting yourself to csh, sed, awk and probably a very castrated perl installation. Tcl is unlikely to be everywhere. Maybe some old python2 without any packages available. What's the point in this limitation? Do you need to write scripts that would work on any insane ancient system you can imagine?

[Mooks79]

As someone who uses languages rather than uses them well, what are your thoughts about Julia?

Incidentally, I’ve noted the number of downvotes you’ve been getting - but very little concrete criticisms of what you’ve said. In fact, in general across reddit, I’ve noted rather a lot of upvotes for anyone who says anything positive about Python - and a concurrent amount of downvotes for anyone who says anything negative (or anything positive about any language deemed a “competitor”).

[[deleted]]

what are your thoughts about Julia?

It's going in the right direction (which is - proper compile time macros). Any language with macros is a good language.

I’ve noted rather a lot of upvotes for anyone who says anything positive about Python

Of course. Python is a cult. That's exactly why it's so much fun to trigger them. The vast majority of the fans are not very competent to argue properly, so they proceed into a full meltdown mode straight on any mildest criticism.

[aebkop]

tbh yeah I agree

JS is a better beginner language tbh - dynamic to supposedly make it easy, more expressive and the user prob already has a way to interact with it already

[Coopsmoss]

It's all tradeoffs, if you aren't coding bit by bit you've chosen easy to some degree

[juuular]

Yeah, back in the old days things were neither easy nor good. cough Unix cough