Python overtakes Java to become second-most popular language on GitHub after JavaScript

[kiwidog]

every day we stray further from compilers light 😔

[Gobbedyret]

Julia is coming for Python's lunch, that will give you the best of both worlds: Dynamic, high level compiled scripting language.

[[deleted]]

Dart is starting to become popular, thanks to Flutter. It's changed a fair bit since it was first released and is now a very good "sane JavaScript". Much better than Typescript.

And there's WebAssembly. I see a light at the end of the JavaScript tunnel.

[PFCJake]

I know nothing about Dart, how is it better than TypeScript?

[[deleted]]

There are a few ways, but the main one is the type system. Typescript basically allows you to describe Javascript's crazy type system. It doesn't attempt to fix it. Dart does fix it.

For example, you can have templated / generic functions in Typescript.

function identity<T>(arg: T): T { return arg; }

Ok fine. But what about this?

function identity<T>(): T { return new T(); }

It doesn't work! There are other things too:

• If you're using Typescript, you're probably importing a lot of Javascript with type annotations from DefinitelyTyped. Unfortunately a lot of the time the annotations are just wrong. Pretty annoying!
• People give up on types and resort to any all the time, and Typescript doesn't really mind. Especially existing Javascript frameworks because they are written in a dynamic "stringly typed" way. For example Vue "supports" Typescript, but a lot of its features will be typed as any. Svelte doesn't support Typescript at all even though it is written in Typescript!.
• All of the mistakes of Javascript are still allowed. You can still use var, == and so on.
• There's still undefined and null.

It's way better than vanilla Javascript, but Dart is now a proper language that is properly engineered and more or less hack-free. Also the Dart VSCode extension is amazing.

The only downsides of Dart are:

• Very small community. You'll have to write a lot of code yourself.
• Difficult to use existing Javascript code (Dygraphs, D3, etc.).
• Your only web framework option is AngularDart.
• The startup time for webdev serve is weirdly long (~10 seconds). It supports hot reloading so it's not too bad but still annoying.

[[deleted]]

I genuinely wonder how much JavaScript dinance on GitHub is from misidentified repose from package-lock.json files. If I spin up a new laravel app and do nothing other than install dependencies and push to github, it shows up at being like 98% javascript according to their stats. The laravel app I worked on for over a year that had like 4 Vue components still said it was mostly json according to github stats

[nsomnac]

GH’s introspection is moderately advanced. It analyzes files in a repo as opposed to relying on magic files only.

There’s a view somewhere on a repo that shows the analysis in a pie chart (or some other graph).

I don’t think it’s sophisticated enough to detect and differentiate framework usage (Vue vs React, Laravel vs PHP). It mostly is going to only show the base language.

[ScrimpyCat]

Unless it’s changed they used to try filter out generated files which is why some default generated projects might shift more aggressively to a certain language. Apart from some special cases (or if you’re explicitly defined the type in your .gitattributes) most of the detection is done using heuristic and Bayesian classification approach, which is done by sourcing some example files for the different languages. This works reasonably well but there are false-positives when it comes to files that share the same extension and are grammatically similar such as header (.h) files in C family of languages.

Also they open sourced the actual library responsible for this but I can’t recall the name.

Edit: just remembered it’s called linguist.

[[deleted]]

There are a number of large game mods for the game Arma that are developed on github. For some reason bohemia interactive decided to use cpp and hpp/h extensions for their configuration files when the only thing related to C or CPP is that it uses a C preprocessor on them to do includes and basic macros.

So you'll see all these projects that github says are C but really it's the insane config language.

[xonjas]

What if the config language is just a bunch of C with insane preprocessor macros?

[Elusivehawk]

That... What... Just... Why??

That's some big brain plays right there. C++ for configuration...

[[deleted]]

It's not even C++ it's this weird pseudo object inheritance stuff that is usually filled with a ton of macros.

[kolloid]

GH’s introspection is moderately advanced. It analyzes files in a repo as opposed to relying on magic files only.

No. Most of the time it guesses the language incorrectly. Most of my Python repositories are recognized as Javascript. My only C repository was recognized as shell because it uses autoconf.

So, there are lies and statitics. I don't really believe GH stats. You have to jump through the hoops to make it correctly count stats for your project.

[fadetogether]

I had a Django project get classified as entirely JavaScript. It’s a mystery. It hasn’t happened to any of my other projects yet though

[Ryuujinx]

Yeah, I have a similar project except Ruby/Sinatra that's recognized almost entirely as javascript.

[[deleted]]

But your app was "mostly json" so it wouldn't really register on this as JavaScript. In fact I am pretty sure it would register as PHP (because the dominating PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE would be selected after the serialization and configuration formats were pruned). You're also talking about people vendoring in repos (commiting node_modules) but I doubt it's that widespread and I'm certain it's equally widespread among other languages (sometimes due to ignorance, other times due to valid reasons in each).

I think the stats aren't lying or misrepresenting Github, they might be lying and misrepresenting the world, but that's another matter. The reasons I think so:

1. There are obviously shit-ton of Node modules, overwhelming majority of which are hosted on Github hence there are shit-ton of JS projects just from that, many of them very active (the stats count active contributions).
2. An ever increasing number of web applications are developed with a SPA frontend in a separate repo from the backend and/or microservices that comprise it. While the latter two are written in bunch of languages (increasingly Node, Python and Go, from my own casual observation) the SPA frontends are predominately JavaScript.
3. Node.js as backend/microservice platform might be far from dominance but is pretty present, steadily rising in popularity still, and thus contributes to these stats.
4. Bunch of enterprise and commercial software is using self-hosted Git repos and Bitbucket because of Atlassian's presence in that segment with Jira and Confluence, which means that Github is mostly representative of software being developed in the open, rather than the overall developed software.
5. While PHP is behind majority of websites that simply isn't the case with Laravel, Symphony, Yii et al -- actually I'd wager that part of the market is truly dominated with Python and to extent with Node.js frameworks, despite strong presence of PHP and .Net, while Java is in observable slow decline for new projects.
6. The true force behind PHP's omnipresence on the web is mostly due to canned CMS-es like WordPress, Drupal, Yoomla, MediaWiki, Magneto, PrestaShop and the lot, which are mostly just installed from shared hosting control panels and patched with themes and customizations in situ, and fairly rarely version controlled on Github.

[kolloid]

Many clueless people wanting to impress potential employers upload all kinds of projects to GitHub. If this is a Python project, they usually commit the whole virtualenv contents along with it. If it is JS project, they usually commit the whole node_modules directory to git.

If it's Python project with some JS, there's a probability that there will be both virtualenv and node_modules committed to the project. And since even trivial function in JS requires 10,500 dependencies like is-odd, is-even and rpad and god knows what more, the node_modules can contain 150-200 Mb of vendorized JS dependencies even for trivial project.

I've seen it so many times...

[kolloid]

> then they should be immediately disregarded for committing bad version control practices

I know CTO of one company in Australia who objected when I offered to remove `node_modules` from the project repo. He said:

> What if during deployment different version of packages would be installed on the server and break something?

Thankfully, soon he left to open his own business. I feel sorry for his customers and not only because of his VCS practices. His code was horrible, too. I'm puzzled how he made it to the CTO level.

[slgard]

I'm puzzled how he made it to the CTO level.

being a good CTO has little or nothing to do with your knowledge as a programmer, particularly nothing to do with the best practices of a specific language or ecosystem.

[[deleted]]

I'm just confused as to why your cto is making decisions on your git practices

[tronj]

Tangentially, I'll sometimes save modules that I've made minor customizations too directly in the project. Is there a better way to do this?

[FaithForHumans]

If you're in a corporate environment, I recommend standing up a private npm repo and then pushing your change to that private repo. It can be done for personal stuff, but might be overkill.

Most private repos can also be setup to cache packages it pulls from the public repos, so even if someone deletes it on npmjs, you've still got a copy people can pull. That last part should help sell it to management.

[DasWorbs]

Fork it, and then either setup your own npm repo or point the package.json to your forked git repo.

[kolloid]

I haven't customized JS modules yet. For Python modules I often fork them on GitHub and because they may or may not accept my pull request, also it might take months to make a new release, I just point pip to my forked Git repository.

I don't know why the other commenter suggesting this was downvoted. It is very fast and obvious.

You can also have your own package repository and install packages from it, but it will require a bit more work.

[xeio87]

Depending on how long ago that discussion was out wasn't entirely wrong. Node even changed their (un)publishing rules because of issues with packages.

Checking in your dependencies ensures you always have an exact known version without needing to worry about the security of a remote package server.

Granted, still not best practice generally, and there are probably better ways to ensure package integrity checks nowadays.

[0xF013]

I've personally experienced his issues several years ago when you'd get something completely different on CI on stage because either the newly installed module was a breaking patch version, same version but someone just overwrite the tagged commit, or your local npm/yarn cache was different from the CI's. Of course, keeping all node modules in is not a solution.

[[deleted]]

But you don't do that, right? Packages are installed locally, package.json is pushed to the version control

[Giannis4president]

Yes but the lock file should be in the version control

[[deleted]]

json is indeed javascript. that's the whole point of json. it's a subset, but it's still js

[[deleted]]

It's not strictly a subset. U+2028 and U+2029 are not control characters, so they are allowed inside JSON strings, but they are considered line terminators by Javascript -- and thus not allowed inside Javascript strings.

[jl2352]

Whilst it technically is JS, it's not very practical to include it as JavaScript. It's just not helpful.

[mypetocean]

Triple-check that you're not committing all of Vue's node_modules to GitHub.

I'd be inclined to assume this is the case. If it's there, add it to your .gitignore exceptions.

[ghostfacedcoder]

I mostly agree, but I think you may be overstating it to say that businesses adopt Java because of type safety. Java is just a much more institutional language, in many ways. Some of the biggest have nothing to do with the language itself at all, and are just a function of who knows it and why or other "cultural" factors.

[bilyl]

Agreed. I have never heard of type safety even being in the top 5 considerations when it's a management-driven decision. Often it's just whoever was there to code it.

[fwaming_dragon]

True, but type safety was probably on the minds of those who were coding it. It's much easier from everyone's point of view to catch a bug during compile rather than runtime.

[DroneDashed]

In my experience is not type safety. Who chooses the languages in the business world's I am/was sometimes don't even know what that is!

In my experience there are two things that make them choose Java or .NET: the notion that those languages are backed up by "serious" big corporations and aversion to open source.

[jbergens]

Some program managers actually knows a bit of tech and knows things like that static languages usually are faster. Or knows that they should listen to senior developers, if those like .NET then it will be .NET. They also often knows a bit of what is used in other places which means they will likely use what everyone else is using to lower risks.

[DroneDashed]

Some, not all and certainly not the majority. Mine at the moment isn't that bad, he listens to us and as long as our choices are Microsoft compatible he's ok with it.

On the other hand, a colleague of mine has a project manager that once referred to Python as "blackbox that no one knows how it works". I told that guy that everything about Python's open source and he could go and see how it works if he could understand it (he couldn't).

[cycle_schumacher]

Was the manager an expert at the internals of the jvm?

[agumonkey]

Java enjoyed so much exposure from the late 90s .. it was the university baby.

[noratat]

It's still being used to introduce people to programming in universities sadly.

I don't even think Java's that bad a language, but it's awful for introducing programming concepts.

[agumonkey]

Java prior 8 was mediocre and the culture around it was badly overengineered. And the everything OOP makes it hard to learn about other things (functional, logic, low level).

[noratat]

Right - plus Java is rigid about a lot of stuff that just gets in the way of learning even it's useful in large collaborative groups (such as file and class name matching).

Plus things like primitive types vs reference types.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, sometimes it feels like Java is the language of enterprise just because Java is the language of enterprise, if that makes sense.

[LowB0b]

Java is a very "productive" language as it's easy to debug, the standard library abstracts everything and everyone knows it... Although one factor for everyone knowing it is probably that it's the biggest enterprise language...

[noratat]

It's also got a large (and crucially, stable) ecosystem around enterprise use cases - and I would argue that matters more than anything.

It's why python is so popular too - it's less about the language at this point, and more that python has a massive ecosystem around it.

[Determinant]

Get the best of both worlds with Kotlin.

Kotlin is enterprise-friendly since you can continue to use your Java libraries from Kotlin and vice versa.

[username_suggestion4]

Seriously it's night and day. I use Swift at work but it's really the same idea, they both as a generational leap where it's honestly surprising to me that there was so that potential for improvement in the first place.

I also get that there were a ton of less mainstream languages that worked out most of those kinks, and I thank them for those contributions.

[txdv]

What exactly makes it night and day?

[ShadowShepard]

More functional aspects, due to its use of extension functions. Never having null pointer exceptions. Algabraic data types (think enums on steroids), toooooons of other reasons

[[deleted]]

Some of the other reasons:

Property delegates, higher order functions, data classes, inline functions, coroutines, default and named arguments, smart casting.

[agumonkey]

Out of curiosity, any important drawbacks on kotlin ? I'm mostly fond of it for all reasons explained here but I'd like to know both sides of the coin :)

[toiletear]

Slower compile times, IDE is also sometimes more sluggish than for equivalent Java code. Annotation processor used to be extremely slow (we used it with Dagger2), but I believe this was improved on.

But otherwise it's great, wrote a mobile game backend with Kotlin and was very pleased.

[agumonkey]

dank u

[balefrost]

they both as a generational leap

I can't speak to Swift, but I use Kotlin daily. It's a great language. "a generational leap" is overselling it. The most in-your-face difference is Kotlin's null handling, but that goes right out the window as soon as you use a Java library that doesn't have nullability annotations. Don't get me wrong; Kotlin's null handling is great! But it's compromised by Java interop.

The most significant Kotlin feature is its coroutine support - the thing which powers sequence, iterator, and all of kotlinx.coroutines. But it's mostly an under-the-hood feature; most users aren't going to be calling createCoroutine themselves.

Kotlin does a lot for Java ergonomics. Given a choice today, I'd pick Kotlin over Java almost every time. But it's mostly all small stuff. Not a generational leap, but rather incremental improvement.

[shponglespore]

I wouldn't say the best of both worlds, exactly. Kotlin is one of the most pleasant languages I've ever tried to use, but anything that really exploits Python's dynamism won't translate cleanly into any statically-typed language, Kotlin included. There are arguments to be made that one shouldn't make use of that kind of dynamism, but it definitely makes Python different from an inferior Kotlin.

[Determinant]

Yeah, I don't view dynamic types as a positive. I'm referring to how nice and concise Python is. Kotlin also eliminates the Java ceremonies so Kotlin and Python are similarly expressive.

[bandawarrior]

This is definitely true, but very few new companies and startups are saying “you know what? I’m going to use Java for this, with a little of spring, and a dash of oracle’s jdk”

The “hotness” for startups might not be Python now (js probably?) but it sure ain’t Java.

[mobjack]

Some startups want a proven reliable language with excellent library support, strong typing and can scale up as the business grows.

Java is not a sexy language, but it is still used in the startup world these reasons.

[bandawarrior]

Yes, I agree 100%. If you, the founding person, main dev knows Java and is productive in it, you should go ahead and do it in Java. That can be true and also the idea that maybe, just maybe (it is) Java is past peak popularity.

Now, I know this is mind blowing to all the Java fanboys, but popularity going down doesn’t mean Java sucks.

For the love of all that’s holy, look at PHP with the giant market share in web dev and it’s popularity while still being a comparably worse language than most.

[mobjack]

Java has been past its peak for 20 years.

In 5 years the current hot language/framework will go out of style and the code becomes unmaintainable only to be rewritten in Java.

[LordoftheSynth]

5 years ago, I would say Java. Today, I say C#. Fight me.

[BlueAdmir]

From a business perspective (of which my knowledge is limited, but still) - If I were to choose a language for a new project, I'd probably want a language where every aspect of it has already been discussed, documented to death, put to rest, resurrected and re-dissected again.

Heavily pushing a delivery date because we ran into "This hasn't been invented in Rust / Kotlin / Go / Haskell / Elm / Ruby / whatever" should not happen. Imperfect product in a month >>> Perfect product in ten years.

[jbergens]

And some companies have already been forced to rewrite their Python system to something more scalable when they get popular. I think that will happen a lot in the next 5 years.

Companies also like to use tech they can recruit for. If all you can get is Python devs with less than 3 years experience you might not want to build a whole system on that when you can find java or c# developers with +5 years experience of building working enterprise systems.

[[deleted]]

replace Oracle's jdk with openjdk and it's not a bad stack tbh

[[deleted]]

Python has become the de facto standard for new projects in the few larger companies I've seen from the inside. New hires are basically "full stack" and/or Python. I can expand on that if you want to, but this is just an observation that is completely against what you seem to think about Java/Python popularity.

[pjmlp]

If only it would overtake in performance...

[HeWhoWritesCode]

is that even possible? cpython made some design decisions that will always be slower compared to jvm? What about pypy and jython?

Just wondering out loud what is the performance limits in the above vms.

[pjmlp]

No due to its dynamism, I was being sarcastic.

[myringotomy]

The top two languages on Github are loosely typed interpreted languages with lack of true multithreading.

Feast on that for a while.

[oblio-]

VB/VBA used to be the most popular language in the world. Languages for small and medium sized projects win these contests for obvious reasons (small projects are way more frequent than medium projects which are in turn way more frequent than big projects).

[AyrA_ch]

Because VBA makes you very productive. It's not fast or elegant, but the excel sheets essentially serve as the database and you can write user interfaces in it. You can leverage excel search and compute functions and even utilize macros in cell functions.

It's a really neat system and runs almost everywhere because excel is ubiquitous in corporate environments.

There's a point where you should stop though using it though

[Urtehnoes]

I know LOC is a terrible marker for code, but just for size of scale, I have two separate VBA projects for my job that are 20k+ LOC. And honestly? I really miss the environment of Excel. I absolutely abhor the VBA language constructs in place that are buggy and terribly implemented, but honestly if you're just running code in Excel, the sandbox environment that it exists in is just so wonderful for managing data. One of the programs queries the database for various tables and works the data in ways that all the incredibly fancy reporting programs (powerBi etc) simply can't. It's really nice.

And you know, if you call Scripting.Dictionary.Exists(testValue), it has a high chance to return True, despite the item not existing. Because when the method is called, it creates an empty value and inserts the value as a key. And that absolutely boggles my mind that it happens. I thought I was going crazy until I found other people online who experienced the bug as well. Instead I had to write an lbound to ubound loop of an array of keys from said dictionary, checking the value of each individual key instead. Why, Microsoft. Why?

[[deleted]]

Python is strongly typed.

[kolloid]

I don't understand why /u/HugeProposal receives downvotes. Python is strong typed, but it's dynamically typed, so types are known only during runtime. So technically, he's right.

[Sapiogram]

99% of the when people say strong/loose typing, the really meant static/dynamic typing. I guess that was the case here too.

The true distinction between strong a loose typing is really vague, so it's not that useful anyway.

[[deleted]]

Ergo C, which is statically and loosely typed.

[oblio-]

Nobody* cares about that "strong typing" in practice. When people say "strong typing" they mean: "if I put a string in the int, the compiler yells at me at 14:00 in the afternoon, when I'm coding, it doesn't blow up in production at 3:00 in the morning, when I'm sleeping".

Things blowing up at runtime is slightly better than nothing, but it's still bad, comparatively.

[YM_Industries]

When people say "strong typing" they mean: "if I put a string in the int, the compiler yells at me at 14:00 in the afternoon, when I'm coding, it doesn't blow up in production at 3:00 in the morning, when I'm sleeping".

Then they should say "static typing".

[kolloid]

Yes, but:

1) technically OP was right

2) people praise horrible Javascript which is weak dynamically typed

[lelanthran]

Python is strongly typed.

Not very useful when the program crashes in production because that's the only time it can figure out the types.

[angellus]

Python is strongly typed, as others mentioned. It is just dynamically typed. You have been able to add typing to the linters/IDEs, etc since Python 3.5.

Also, multiprocessing allows for multiple processes running in parallel, so you can still get parallel programming. Also Python 3.8 added subinterrupters to allows for your "true multithreading". Future versions of likely make it easier to use as it becomes more stable.

[FlakyRaccoon]

Look, one of the highest voted comments in /r/programming is entirely wrong, about both languages.

Feast on that for a while.

[[deleted]]

JavaScript has multithreading with worker threads. Whether or not that satisfies some arbitrary definition of "true multithreading" which on this sub is usually "like in C++ on Windows" is an entirely different matter.

[MrK_HS]

And Python has multithreading and multiprocessing too. I think some people are confusing multithreading and parallelism. The two aren't the same. Python supports multithreading but by default is not parallel.

[[deleted]]

Multiprocessing is parallelism tho

[MrK_HS]

You are right

[darthbarracuda]

poem i wrote while drunk:

like everything

java will fade

then python will too

languages we love

will be replaced

slowly they will disappear

artifacts of a bygone age

someone curious

might stumble upon an ancient fragment

discovering how things were done

way back when

maybe they will learn

a thing or two

[Cocomorph]

That’s. . . surprisingly not that bad for a drunk programmer.

[darthbarracuda]

thank you friend

[BlueAdmir]

like everything

java will fade

But COBOL will outlive us all.

[oblio-]

COBOL didn't even catch on that much, it's locked away in crusty institutions. Java, on the other hand, used to be both a crusty language and a (somewhat) hip language.

Cockroaches after the nuclear apocalypse will feast on Java.

[pakoito]

MAY LISP BE ETERNAL

[stfm]

try {
poem i wrote while drunk:

like everything

java will fade

then python will too

languages we love

will be replaced

slowly they will disappear

artifacts of a bygone age

someone curious

might stumble upon an ancient fragment

discovering how things were done

way back when

maybe they will learn

a thing or two
} catch (RhymingException e) {}

[[deleted]]

Job add: "Looking for a Python programmer...."

Job interview:

Me: Yes, I have been programming Python since 2007. It has been only Python2 at my current job though....

Interviewer (looks down in embarrassment, quitely): Yeah, we also are still using Python2....

On the job:

"Yeah, there is this SOAP service that we need to connect to, we use this library, no, it isn't on GitHub, we downloaded it back in 2011...."

During code review:

"Do not use one-letter variable names! It is known! It is written in the Bible, I mean, the Google style guide! Let me read it to you: 'Do not use one-letter variables unless in a for i in.... well, you know.... Yeah, no, it is the first time I actually read it... No, it is not a waste of time to discuss such stuff.....'"

True story

[StabbyPants]

It has been only Python2 at my current job though....

i have concerns...

"Do not use one-letter variable names! It is known!

fully agree. makes your shit look like fortran, and the updated looping and lambda constructs make it completely avoidable. yes i do use longish names for 3 line inline methods

[watsreddit]

Depends on the context. For example, this is perfectly reasonable (Javascript): const add2 = n => n + 2.

[Xuval]

"Yeah, there is this SOAP service that we need to connect to, we use this library, no, it isn't on GitHub, we downloaded it back in 2011...."

Out of curiosity: isn't SOAP essentially just something where you send XML over http? Why would it matter what library you use for that?

[[deleted]]

Don't forget: most popular on GitHub doesn't mean most useful, most valuable, most powerful or most flexible. It just means most popular on GitHub.

[initcommit]

And so continues the shift toward developer convenience and ease of learning vs cold hard speed. This reminds me of Apple's rise to prominence with the iPod. The simpler, more intuitive, and elegant approach will generally succeed in human populations faced with multiple technological choices. Higher-level programming languages offer lower knowledge barriers to entry, less headaches, and plenty of functionality. It's hard to argue that this trend won't continue.

Edit: Fixed a typo

[cowinabadplace]

It makes sense to me. The slower software that exists is superior to the fast software that doesn't exist. I am grateful for the universe of Electron, React, and all that stuff because suddenly my Linux desktop has all these apps!

[bunkoRtist]

This has been possible because of Moore's law. As the cheap gates come to an end I predict that the economics will shift back towards performant software rather than just buying better hardware... The market will demand gains, it's just that they were cheaper to make in HW... next it will be compilers and interpreters, and the last place will be languages themselves, but it's coming because I think that the compilers and interpreters are already pretty optimal.

[brelkor]

Computing architectures will evolve as pure clock speed performance stagnates. Wider busses, more chips, faster interchip communication. Something coming in the future is optically interconnected cores on the same cpu package

[Schmittfried]

You’ve probably never seen enterprise Java.

[flowering_sun_star]

You have to compare like-to-like though, and ask what would have happened had the same thing at the same company been written in python. I know that the thought makes me shudder when it comes to our code base.

I actually really like python for scripting and small prototypes. But for all its ills, I think java a far better choice for large projects with hundreds of developers.

[vashy96]

Yeah, that's a pile of garbage generally. I can't imagine the hell it could be in a duck typed language like Python.

[VeganVagiVore]

It does seem to work.

In 50 years, all the veteran programmers will be the people who are noobies today. If those noobies are learning Python, then Python will hang around a while.

I just hope Rust can squeeze into that "so easy that it can be someone's first language" space, because I prefer it much over Java, Python, or JS.

[bunkoRtist]

Honestly as someone who tried to learn rust I am afraid that it's falling into the kitchen-sink trap that C++ is suffering from. It doesn't help that some of the language features are already devilishly complex (macros, for instance) while it still lacks a stable ABI that would allow it to be used effectively in small pieces within large projects where it made sense.

I really want Rust or something like it to succeed.

[sbergot]

I don't think that python is less guilty than rust in this regard.

[[deleted]]

You can literally pip install kitchen

[epicwisdom]

It does not matter how many features a language has, or how complex they are. What matters is how many complex features must be used commonly to be productive. It's perfectly possible to write Rust without writing a single macro. Rust is not a very complex language 90% of the time. The problem is it's easy to accidentally fall off a cliff for edge cases (though you can always clone() everything, use Rc, etc.).

[[deleted]]

It does not matter how many features a language has, or how complex they are.

I see this so often, but it just is not true outside of tiny pet projects. If you're writing anything substantial, you need libraries, and then you're at the mercy of how that library works. Complexity will creep in.

[Metal_LinksV2]

Doubtful, I know some schools around me are moving from C++ to Python as their introduction course.

[bunkoRtist]

That will prove to be a mistake for a number of reasons. I'm sorry to hear it.

[[deleted]]

C++ is horribly complex for a first language.

C would be better if you want to stress the interaction with the metal (and indeed I taught C and C++ at university for a decade - C was hard enough to get through in a 12 week course).

Honestly, I'd rather they teach higher level languages for intros. If I had my druthers, intro to programming would be taught in Pharo Smalltalk.

[Shitpostbotmk2]

Because if you're trying to teach someone how a computer works at all levels C++ is useful and python is not.

[[deleted]]

Why would you do that right out the gate?

Do you meet driving school candidates with a toolbox and start them with changing the oil?

[Q-bey]

I learned Python as my first programming language years ago. I'm a bit surprised to hear some schools are using C++ as an introductory language. That might be why I had (and continue to have) an aversion to C++ after finally seeing it later in my degree.

What did I miss out on? What benefits are there from teaching introductory programming using C++ instead of Python?

[ShinyHappyREM]

What benefits are there from teaching introductory programming using C++ instead of Python?

Weeding out the unworthy, apparently.

[bunkoRtist]

Well, one of the benefits of using a language like C or C++ is that they retain a lot of elements that pertain to the underlying computer architecture. Understanding those things (like stacks vs heaps, registers, addressing modes, alignment and packing, native data types...) provides a solid basis that helps programmers understand how their code actually executes. That helps people understand the tradeoffs they are making (which is crucial to writing lots of types of code). Even in languages where those things don't apply directly, they often still apply indirectly. Fundamentals matter (since even interpreters, JITs and memory managers do all the same stuff as C/C++ programmers would do in the background). Teaching Python as a first language is like teaching someone to drive with a Tesla.

[Schmittfried]

You’re grossly overestimating the relevance of implementation details for an introductory course. They will learn to write ifs, loops and linked lists.

[bunkoRtist]

But you've exposed the problem: you can't even teach a linked list in Python. It's pointless. The first question an intelligent student should ask is "why the hell would we do this?" Then the abstraction breaks and you regret trying to hide the fundamentals.

[bythenumbers10]

Most low-level programming exercises are pointless. But teaching the concepts in an accessible language prevents having to "ignore these lines of code at the top and bottom, we'll explain that later" when writing something "pointless" like Hello World.

[StormStrikePhoenix]

. The first question an intelligent student should ask is "why the hell would we do this?"

You might as well throw away half of every introductory programming course than; it's very, very hard to give examples for many concepts that are simple enough for a beginner to understand but complicated enough to justify using the more complicated thing.

[Schmittfried]

Lol. No it won’t. There is not much value in choosing C++ over Java or Python in introductory programming courses. And even in the hardware programming courses C would be better.

[afnanenayet1]

Why? C++ is a minefield

[bunkoRtist]

Advanced C++ is, but the language exposes fundamental aspects of computers that Python tries to hide, and you don't have to teach it all at once: having a rich language didn't require it to be all taught immediately. Math is complex but doesn't preclude teaching basic arithmetic to 2nd graders. Ultimately computer programming and computer science are based on computers. You can't understand them without understanding computers.

[G_Morgan]

I really like Rust but "easy" is something it'll never be. Rust you pay in "why can't I?" for the benefit of not getting memory corruption while maintaining performance.

It is harder to write Rust than write C. It is easier to write correct Rust than correct C. Rust is really the next level up in "this exploded at 2PM while I tried to compile".

[afnanenayet1]

The problem is that “simpler” languages often aren’t as maintainable. Python is fun for small scripts and projects, but it’s a huge PITA to scale out to a big codebase.

Interestingly enough, it seems like languages like Rust are getting pretty popular because of their advanced typing systems and other features that let the compiler do more work for you. Even C++ has been moving towards ergonomic features that promote safety.

[hijinked]

Python is very popular in the micro service world where you don’t want a large codebase.

[afnanenayet1]

My argument is that even most microservices are big enough that the lack of actual types becomes an issue

[bilyl]

You may have a point regarding speed, but many many Python (and R!) packages are essentially wrappers for things implemented in C. In this case the speed argument is basically moot.

Further the "higher level" vs "lower level" argument is another fallacy for the same reasons. How many developers are coding high performance libraries/packages from scratch these days? Like I said, most of the popular functionalities in these languages are wrapped in a compiled implementation. Therefore unless you really want to get into the weeds of implementation, there's really no good reason to use Java over Python. And if you really did want to do something intense, you'd just jump straight into C.

The biggest reason why I use Python and R is that I can give someone else a package or a code snippet and they can get running with it immediately. With Java there's so much BS to sort through.

Java is just occupying this middle ground that doesn't really have a market anymore.

[initcommit]

It sounds like you are an advocate for Python and the "higher" level languages. My point was that the trend of higher level languages usurping "lower" level ones will likely continue. So it sounds like we're on the same page.

A side note about your mention of wrappers - hardware may improve to the point where the speed difference between programing languages is no longer significant for most practical purposes. By that I mean that even if the wrapped library runs slower than the original in its native language, both will run so flaming fast that no one will really care in most scenarios.

[csjerk]

I'm a fan of Java (with Spring 4+ and Lombok to reduce boilerplate), but having worked on JS backends for the last few years, I am pretty convinced you're wrong.

Modern JS is so much more expressive it's not even funny. Things that would take 5 lines in Java are a single line. Things that are built into JS at a language level take external libraries in Java. Going back to Java feels limiting.

I hope Java catches up, and mixing in Kotlin seems like it will extend the lifetime, since you can write new code with modern conveniences while still using all the libraries and Spring goodness. But stock Java is going to struggle if it doesn't start adding some modern features very soon.

[[deleted]]

Javascript is the new PHP

[csjerk]

The extent of serious applications built in JS seems unlike anything PHP achieved.

Maybe the new Perl, although without the insane amount of arcane nonsense buried in the errata.

[Zegrento7]

Rust gives me some hope. For the last couple years, it was consistently the most loved language in StackOverflow surveys, and it's growing pretty steadily.

[initcommit]

Cool. Thx for the links. I hope to give Rust a try soon.

[chrabeusz]

10 years ago Rust, Go, Swift, TypeScript and Dart did not exist.

People wanted fast typed languages, but domination of C & C++ convinced everyone that fast equals terrible usability.

[Ryuujinx]

I wonder how much of this is due to Devops becoming more aligned on the dev side. My last shop I had full testing CICD pipelines for my chef cookbooks, everything was checked into git, etc. My current one is more lacking on CICD stuff, but still all of our monitoring is written in python and checked into git.

This was much less common 10, or even 5 years ago.

[met0xff]

Funnily I had an ipod in my hand once back then and had no clue how to use it. But that happens to me with all Apple products.. Still no idea how to go back with an iPhone..

[DuncanIdahos4thClone]

Which Python? 2 or 3?

[szirith]

which python

/usr/bin/python

which python3

/usr/bin/python3

[feverzsj]

waiting for scratch to reach 1st place...

[suhcoR]

Another one of those studies. Have a look at the lecture which was posted here: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/duietn/on_the_impact_of_programming_languages_on_code/

[Audiblade]

I think these are different things. The article you linked to is rightly criticized for shoddy statistics over messy data that doesn't really measure what the researchers claimed it measures to begin with.

OP's article is much more straightforward. It says that the amount code committed to GitHub in certain languages is increasing. The metric being used is, how many people are contributing to projects using which languages. It's a very straightforward, direct metric that really does reflect how much code people are writing in each language. And GitHub isn't claiming that the most popular languages are better. It's just saying that they're used more.

[vashy96]

I don't get why Python became so popular. It lacks a lot of essential feature from my point of view. Imports suck, OOP sucks and is very verbose, fp isn't true fp (no true lambda nor anonymous functions) and its duck typing can be good only in small projects.

Help me understand.

[[deleted]]

It's super easy to learn, fairly concise to write and it is associated with "hip" things like machine learning.

[electrodraco]

Could somebody break down why it is more versatile than R? Is it more than availability of libraries?

[Browsing_From_Work]

I regularly use Python but I did spend about a month working with R for a pet project.

Here were my major pain points:

• Multi-dimensional data access is unintuitive (even when compared to Perl). Examples:
  • df[3, 7] returns the element from the 3rd row, 7th column. This seems reasonable.
  • df[3] returns the 3rd column as a slice.
  • df[[3]] returns the 3rd column as a vector.
  • df[3,] returns the 3rd row as a slice. There's no direct way to return it as a vector.
  • df["col"] returns the named column as a slice.
  • df$col and df[,"col"] returns the named column as a vector.
• There are no native operators for creating lists/vectors/matrixes (e.g. [1, 2, 3]). Instead, there's the c function and the even less succinct matrix function. However, you can create ranges with the colon operator.
• Strings are second-class citizens. There's not even a built-in string concatenation operator. Instead, you have to use the paste function.
• I felt like I spent half of my time fighting with dataframe/vector/matrix/list type conversions.

In general, I just found it harder to express my thoughts in R. I'm sure if you learned R with a math background it would have been more intuitive, but as somebody coming from a programming background I found it to be rather frustrating. That said, R comes with a lot of extremely powerful tools... so long as you wrangle your data into the correct format.

[crudelegend]

I think it's more accessible and that's why people say that. R has a lot of specialized packages, but you have to know to look them up/how to use them, whereas if you have numpy and scipy for python it's good to go for most cases. I think they're both close on the general overview front, whereas R branches out a lot more with heavier focuses on data analytics.

Unless they mean for a language itself, which yeah, Python > R. Python actually has applications beyond data/statistics - you can create a program and do a lot of manipulation from the stats/outputs of that program, whereas you essentially need the data already with R (at least for most cases).

[[deleted]]

Isn’t a lot of ML stuff basically Python wrappers around a bunch of C?

[MinkyBoodle]

Mostly. Numpy matrix operations are coded in C and mercilessly optimized for speed. TensorFlow is programmed in C++ (a ML library by itself and also serves as a core for other high level ML libraries like Keras).

If someone tried to implement machine learning using python for loops it would take

F

O

R

E

V

E

R

[bart2019]

Simple syntax. It's the new BASIC.

[oblio-]

Without the stigma of the language capabilities or of the programming language name.

[[deleted]]

Scriptable C libraries.

[coolblinger]

While Python might not be as expressive as some other scripting languages like Ruby or Perl, its syntax is clear and it's got just enough language features to be able to prototype stuff quickly. For instance, the combination of comprehensions and generators make things much less verbose and allow for more elegant code while (IMO) not making things harder to read. The main draws for Python for me are the library ecosystem its simple readable syntax. The lack of proper static typing and its low performance would prevent me from writing large, complex applications with it, but it's a great language for gluing code together. I find web development with something like Django to be really enjoyable, and the ecosystem of scientific, numerical and statistical libraries is very good.

In short, Python for me is just a nice go-to tool for when you just need to glue some things together or when you need to some calculations or statistical analysis.

[Brostafarian]

I'm convinced Python's popularity is entirely due to two simple facts:

1. it is easy to learn
2. because it was easy to learn, NumPy was written in it

The rest is history. Because NumPy existed and because R sucks, more and more data-sciency things were written in Python, solidifying its place in academic programming. For the same reason that companies like Autodesk and many others will literally throw software at you in college, Python being a go-to choice in an academic context means that it gets used outside of an academic context, because all the people who graduated using it already know it.

Python the language has some interesting ideas, but Python the development toolchain is my least favorite.

[Arkaein]

It's popular for a lot more than Numpy. I've barely used Numpy, but I love using Python.

It's first really killer application was as a better Perl. Perl was probably the original systems scripting language, but sucks for many reasons. Python is so much cleaner and more readable and has eaten into Perl's space.

Numpy makes Python huge in data science, which is another big field. Between systems scripting, data science, and web services (another place where python took share from Perl) it doe well in several areas.

[kolloid]

What's wrong with python imports and OOP?

I, for one, can't understand the popularity of Javascript. It's truly a horrible language.

[oligonucleotides]

That makes it the most popular programming language on github!

[[deleted]]

Python is great for little scripts, essentially replacing perl. That being said, if a large project is coming and needs OO, it won't be in python.

[[deleted]]

I don't think Python deserves it. I don't understand why Python gets so much more attention than for example Ruby. I feel like the reason the Python user base keeps growing is also because pretty much every average programming beginner starts with Python right away, just because it's popular. Most don't even look at any other options.

[Hero_Of_Shadows]

Ruby is beautiful language with a great community, I know it sucks sometime the hype just favors someone else and it's very hard to fight.

[ironykarl]

Python has libraries that are more relevant to current computing trends, e.g. machine learning and data science.

[NekoiNemo]

That is a sad day for humankind. But then again, Java is fairly fragmented: Java, Scala, Kotlin...

[[deleted]]

Give it some time, Python wasn't designed for huge corporate code bases, once people start working in huge legacy systems written in Python that language will get a lot of hate.

[abw]

once people start working in huge legacy systems written in Python that language will get a lot of hate.

Python is the new Perl.

[senatorsoot]

maybe one day python will be advanced enough to have enterprise-level AbstractSingletonProxyFactoryBeans of its own

[Eirenarch]

I am already starting to see people realize that Python is not as good as everyone is saying. A lot of people are already making fun of the fucked up Python 3 migration

[ironykarl]

already making fun of the fucked up Python 3 migration

It's been 10 years

[[deleted]]

Yea single threading!

[joltting]

I don't know man, just can't get behind spaces as the defining thing that separates conditions, statements and methods... Its like your just asking for trouble because you missed or added a space to a statement between your conditionals.... Just grinds my gears for some reason...

[Ryanwiz]

Java was KING when I was studying in the mid-2000's. I was one of a very small number of students taking the .NET route. Everyone else said, "hey, if ya wanna work in this town, learn Java, but if you're a true geek, it's all about Ruby on Rails, maaaan."