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Python Is Not A Great Programming Language

Python is not a great programming language.

It's great for beginners. Then it turns into a mess.

What's good

  • A huge ecosystem of good third-party libraries.
  • Named arguments.
  • Multiple inheritance.

What should be good

  • It's easy to learn and read. However, it's only easy to learn and read at the start. Once you get past "Hello world" Python can get really ugly and counterintuitive.
  • The Pythonic philosophy that "There should be one -- and preferably only one -- obvious way to do it." As someone who loves working within rules and rigid frameworks, I love this philosophy! As someone who writes Python, I really wish Python actually stuck to this philosophy. See below.

What's "meh"

  • Forced indentation. Some love it because it enforces consistency and a degree of readability. Some hate it because they think it enforces the wrong consistency. To each their own.
  • Dynamic typing. There are lots of dynamically-typed languages and lots of statically-typed languages. Which kind of typing is better isn't a Python debate, it's a general programming debate.

What's bad

  • 400 ways (more or less) to interpolate strings. This prints "Hello Robin!" 3 times:

    user = {'name': "Robin"}
    print(f"Hello {user['name']}!")
    print("Hello {name}!".format(**user))
    print("Hello %(name)s!" % user)
    

    If there was a unique and obvious use-case for each of these then that would be one thing, but there's not.

  • 69 top-level functions that you have to just memorize. GvR's explanation sounds nice, but in reality it makes things confusing.

  • map doesn't return a list, even though the whole point of a mapping function is to create one list from another. Instead it returns a map object, which is pretty much useless since it's missing append, reverse, etc. So, you always have to wrap it in list(), or use a list comprehension, which, speaking of...

  • List comprehensions are held up as an excellent recent-ish addition to Python. People say they're readable. That's true for simple examples (e.g. [x**2 for x in range(10)]) but horribly untrue for slightly more complex examples (e.g. [[row[i] for row in matrix] for i in range(4)]). I chalk this up to...

  • Weird ordering in ternary/one-line expressions. Most languages follow a consistent order where first you declare conditions, then you do stuff based the on those conditions:

    if user.isSignedIn then user.greet else error
    
    for user in signedInUsers do user.greet
    

    Python does this in the opposite order:

    user.greet if user.isSignedIn else error
    
    [user.greet for user in signedInUsers]
    

    This is fine for simple examples. It's bad for more complex logic because you have to first find the middle of the expression before you can really understand what you're reading.

  • Syntax for tuples. If you write a single-item tuple (tuple,) but forget the trailing comma, it's no longer a tuple but an expression. This is a really easy mistake to make. Considering the only difference between tuples and lists is mutability, it would make much more sense to use the same syntax [syntax] as lists, which does not require a trailing comma, and add a freeze or immutable method. Speaking of...

  • There's no way to make dicts or complex objects immutable.

  • Regular expressions require a lot of boilerplate:

    re.compile(r"regex", re.I | re.M)
    

    Compared to JavaScript or Ruby:

    /regex/ig
    
  • The goofy string literal syntaxes: f'', u'', b'', r''.

  • The many "magic" __double-underscore__ attributes that you just have to memorize.

  • You can't reliably catch all errors and their messages in one statement. Instead you have to use something like sys.exc_info()[0]. You shouldn't have a catch-all in production of course, but in development it's very useful, so this unintuitive extra step is annoying.

What's bad about the culture

Most programmers will acknowledge criticisms of their favorite language. Instead, Pythonists will say, "You just don't understand Python."

Most programmers will say a piece of code is bad if it's inefficient or hard to read. Pythonists will say a piece of code is bad if "it isn't Pythonic enough." This is about as helpful as someone saying your taste in music is bad because "it isn't cultured enough."

Pythonists have a bit of a superiority complex.

@Odalrick
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@pglpm

therefore such choices should be left to the end user.

And they are. Use a different language, that is the choice that should be left to the user.

It's not disliking meaningful indentation I have a problem with, I is the vitriol people seem to have about it I just don't understand.

It's like intentionally picking a red crayon out of a pack of different colours, and screaming about how you hate red.

Imagine a language that would force you to use different fonts for syntax; how would you feel about that?

I wouldn't use it. I also wouldn't hate and scream about it.

I don't see why it should be imposed on others

It should be imposed on others so that people write similar code that is easier to skim and create more useful diffs.

The same reason we have meaningful names and think about the structure of the code.

Indeed that's why I don't use python anymore.

Good, I don't want you to use tools you don't like or feel are not useful.

@Odalrick
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@AkashicSeer

So you're telling me that I can easily copy and paste python from one function to the next and simply let my IDE format it?

Maybe you can't. I've never had a problem with it. Different experiences give rise to different preferences.

Try PyCharm Community edition maybe? I even have it set up so I don't have to press a key, it formats when I save.

Why do pythonians love to stare at screens trying to figure out if the code is properly indented or not?

The point is you don't. The indention is there instantly, and you see instantly if the nesting is correct.

Could this be the issue? You don't use the indention to see if your code is correct?

Why do Pythonians love to waste so much time trying to visually format shit.

We don't. We set the nesting of functions, blocks, et cetera. It just "happens" that it also visually formats.

The thing you have to realise is that to other people the indentation is useful. To me and others who like indentation, it is the indention that tells us what the code is. The braces need to be there to satisfy the computer, but to us they're just line noise; the indentation tells us what the code does.

For instance, c:

if (a > 2)
    do_stuff();
    do_other_stuff();

Looks like both functions are in the if-block to me; and had it been Python I'd be correct and my code would work from the start if I wrote that. But in c, is is incorrect, and one has to reformat for it to be immediately visible.

Worse if you encounter this code in an example. It is obviously wrong, but there is no way of telling what it should do.

Python sidesteps that issue by saying that the for-humans structure is the same as the for-computer structure. Obviously code can still be buggy, but at least it isn't ambiguous and buggy.

What is wrong with letting the IDE do

Nothing. You still have to tell the IDE how to format. In C you do that with braces, in Python you do it with tab and backspace.

I'm sorry you have problems with Pronterface, maybe you can get a refund? And next time check out the software before you buy it, usually if it's that bad other people will warn you.

...so your apparent hatred of indentation is because you are unhappy with a piece of software you bought? So it's not really about the indentation?

disabilities are not a good reason

I get that it is unfair, but it not really Pythons fault that you have trouble reading. You don't have a right to demand that everything caters to you, no-one does. Everyone has things that are inaccessible to them. It's not like there is a shortage of other languages you can use instead.

@AkashicSeer
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AkashicSeer commented Feb 17, 2023 via email

@AkashicSeer
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AkashicSeer commented Feb 17, 2023 via email

@nslay
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nslay commented Feb 17, 2023

What have you tried with C++ when creating a UI? What didn't work? How can C++ development be any slower than using a shitty language that forces you to stare at a screen to make sure you indent properly? I'm looking at GTK, C++, Eclipse, Cmake. I'll never in my life touch Python, it sucks ass that bad. I'm mostly looking to create something that takes minimal space and works as fast as possible so even my old phones can run it. I want to be able to point my old phone at the printer and use it's camera and broadcast it via Wifi so I can view it on other computers and phones while being able to also control the printer.

For C++ GUIs, I have written a wxWidgets GUI for graphically designing power system survivability simulations. It's been a while, but wxWidgets is like Microsoft Foundation Classes, but cross platform. It uses lots of preprocessing macros! And more recently I've used Qt to design a plugin for MITK. I made a mesh editor plugin for fast 3D segmentation annotation for blob-like organs in medical images.

C++ GUI development is slower mostly because it involves having to compile every attempt. Every change you make requires compiling to test! And that's very slow for large projects. When you have a compilation error, you have to compile again after fixing the error! You also have to spend the time to setup the build system to pull in all the dependencies (include paths/library paths) to even build the thing in the first place! GUI toolkits like Qt are massive with hundreds of include files and dozens of libraries... you need to use something like CMake that can navigate the numerous includes/libraries of a GUI toolkit like Qt. On top of CMake, knowledge of library dependencies in Qt really helps!

For the end users, you have to do something like ship the Qt libraries and make sure those users have the proper dependencies or redistributables installed. Versions of dependencies is also an important consideration as different versions can break ABI! That's when you get dreaded symbol errors in Linux. Or you'll have to use something like Dependency Walker to figure out which symbols are missing on Windows.

Now in Python... you just import some Qt module and can instantly start making windows, buttons, text boxes, combo boxes, etc.... I had a colleague make a fancy network topology editor with PyQt in just a matter of hours! This time frame would be nearly impossible in C++! The key here is that you don't need build systems or compiling to make changes and test GUI changes or functionality. It just works out of the box with scripting languages like Python!

What do you get out of C++? Your program is probably going to run faster and it's likely more correct owing to all the compile-time type checks! What do you get out of Python, or other scripting languages? You'll be able to try things faster and with no project bootstrapping overhead.

@sammorton11
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This thread is great lol.

@grahamnicholls
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grahamnicholls commented Feb 17, 2023 via email

@AkashicSeer
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So every time you get an error on Python, it's at runtime - in a medical imaging app. As opposed to a c++ (not that I'm a fan) app, where it is at least syntactically and referentially correct. Scripting languages are not suited to critical apps IMO.

On Fri, 17 Feb 2023, 15:40 nslay, @.> wrote: @.* commented on this gist. ------------------------------ What have you tried with C++ when creating a UI? What didn't work? How can C++ development be any slower than using a shitty language that forces you to stare at a screen to make sure you indent properly? I'm looking at GTK, C++, Eclipse, Cmake. I'll never in my life touch Python, it sucks ass that bad. I'm mostly looking to create something that takes minimal space and works as fast as possible so even my old phones can run it. I want to be able to point my old phone at the printer and use it's camera and broadcast it via Wifi so I can view it on other computers and phones while being able to also control the printer. For C++ GUIs, I have written a wxWidgets GUI for graphically designing power system survivability simulations. It's been a while, but wxWidgets is like Microsoft Foundation Classes, but cross platform. It uses lots of preprocessing macros! And more recently I've used Qt to design a plugin for MITK. I made a mesh editor plugin for fast 3D segmentation annotation for blob-like organs in medical images. C++ GUI development is slower mostly because it involves having to compile every attempt. Every change you make requires compiling to test! And that's very slow for large projects. When you have a compilation error, you have to compile again after fixing the error! You also have to spend the time to setup the build system to pull in all the dependencies (include paths/library paths) to even build the thing in the first place! GUI toolkits like Qt are massive with hundreds of include files and dozens of libraries... you need to use something like CMake that can navigate the numerous includes/libraries of a GUI toolkit like Qt. On top of CMake, knowledge of library dependencies in Qt really helps! For the end users, you have to do something like ship the Qt libraries and make sure those users have the proper dependencies or redistributables installed. Versions of dependencies is also an important consideration as different versions can break ABI! That's when you get dreaded symbol errors in Linux. Or you'll have to use something like Dependency Walker to figure out which symbols are missing on Windows. Now in Python... you just import some Qt module and can instantly start making windows, buttons, text boxes, combo boxes, etc.... I had a colleague make a fancy network topology editor with PyQt in just a matter of hours! This time frame would be nearly impossible in C++! The key here is that you don't need build systems or compiling to make changes and test GUI changes or functionality. It just works out of the box with scripting languages like Python! What do you get out of C++? Your program is probably going to run faster and it's likely more correct owing to all the compile-time type checks! What do you get out of Python, or other scripting languages? You'll be able to try things faster and with no project bootstrapping overhead. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://gist.github.com/a1cba47d62c009a378121398cc5477ea#gistcomment-4474454 or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABYOKGHHTXUOLDI3PSSD3FLWX6LV5BFKMF2HI4TJMJ2XIZLTSKBKK5TBNR2WLJDHNFZXJJDOMFWWLK3UNBZGKYLEL52HS4DFQKSXMYLMOVS2I5DSOVS2I3TBNVS3W5DIOJSWCZC7OBQXE5DJMNUXAYLOORPWCY3UNF3GS5DZVRZXKYTKMVRXIX3UPFYGLK2HNFZXIQ3PNVWWK3TUUZ2G64DJMNZZDAVEOR4XAZNEM5UXG5FFOZQWY5LFVA4TQOBUGA4DQNVHORZGSZ3HMVZKMY3SMVQXIZI . You are receiving this email because you commented on the thread. Triage notifications on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1477376905?ct=notification-email&mt=8&pt=524675 or Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.android&referrer=utm_campaign%3Dnotification-email%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_source%3Dgithub .

Python isn't suited for many things, but that is not stopping those who know only one language from trying to use the one language to do everything the one language shouldn't be used to do. I have yet to find a program written in Ptyhon that works properly without a ceremony of installing 10+ dependencies, and then it still doesn't work

@AkashicSeer
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What have you tried with C++ when creating a UI? What didn't work? How can C++ development be any slower than using a shitty language that forces you to stare at a screen to make sure you indent properly? I'm looking at GTK, C++, Eclipse, Cmake. I'll never in my life touch Python, it sucks ass that bad. I'm mostly looking to create something that takes minimal space and works as fast as possible so even my old phones can run it. I want to be able to point my old phone at the printer and use it's camera and broadcast it via Wifi so I can view it on other computers and phones while being able to also control the printer.

For C++ GUIs, I have written a wxWidgets GUI for graphically designing power system survivability simulations. It's been a while, but wxWidgets is like Microsoft Foundation Classes, but cross platform. It uses lots of preprocessing macros! And more recently I've used Qt to design a plugin for MITK. I made a mesh editor plugin for fast 3D segmentation annotation for blob-like organs in medical images.

C++ GUI development is slower mostly because it involves having to compile every attempt. Every change you make requires compiling to test! And that's very slow for large projects. When you have a compilation error, you have to compile again after fixing the error! You also have to spend the time to setup the build system to pull in all the dependencies (include paths/library paths) to even build the thing in the first place! GUI toolkits like Qt are massive with hundreds of include files and dozens of libraries... you need to use something like CMake that can navigate the numerous includes/libraries of a GUI toolkit like Qt. On top of CMake, knowledge of library dependencies in Qt really helps!

For the end users, you have to do something like ship the Qt libraries and make sure those users have the proper dependencies or redistributables installed. Versions of dependencies is also an important consideration as different versions can break ABI! That's when you get dreaded symbol errors in Linux. Or you'll have to use something like Dependency Walker to figure out which symbols are missing on Windows.

Now in Python... you just import some Qt module and can instantly start making windows, buttons, text boxes, combo boxes, etc.... I had a colleague make a fancy network topology editor with PyQt in just a matter of hours! This time frame would be nearly impossible in C++! The key here is that you don't need build systems or compiling to make changes and test GUI changes or functionality. It just works out of the box with scripting languages like Python!

What do you get out of C++? Your program is probably going to run faster and it's likely more correct owing to all the compile-time type checks! What do you get out of Python, or other scripting languages? You'll be able to try things faster and with no project bootstrapping overhead.

Wow thanks a lot for the detailed feedback. I have been reading and trying for days to decide how to create the UI. I am leaning towards putting it in a browser page, going to look into webview and web assembly today. One reason is I know all devices I want to target have a browser, phones, tablets, laptops, pcs etc. The issue is each has a different OS and each OS has it's own way of doing things. I have not found any UI framework that claims to work on all mobile devices. The other bonus to using a webview or browser etc. is I can use HTML,Javascript, CSS to build it and I can view it without compilation steps. The downside is it feels cheesier. LOL But my app needs a built in server for the user to remotely via browser to interact with their Printer/CNC machines anyways.

@AkashicSeer
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So every time you get an error on Python, it's at runtime - in a medical imaging app. As opposed to a c++ (not that I'm a fan) app, where it is at least syntactically and referentially correct. Scripting languages are not suited to critical apps IMO.

On Fri, 17 Feb 2023, 15:40 nslay, @.> wrote: @.* commented on this gist. ------------------------------ What have you tried with C++ when creating a UI? What didn't work? How can C++ development be any slower than using a shitty language that forces you to stare at a screen to make sure you indent properly? I'm looking at GTK, C++, Eclipse, Cmake. I'll never in my life touch Python, it sucks ass that bad. I'm mostly looking to create something that takes minimal space and works as fast as possible so even my old phones can run it. I want to be able to point my old phone at the printer and use it's camera and broadcast it via Wifi so I can view it on other computers and phones while being able to also control the printer. For C++ GUIs, I have written a wxWidgets GUI for graphically designing power system survivability simulations. It's been a while, but wxWidgets is like Microsoft Foundation Classes, but cross platform. It uses lots of preprocessing macros! And more recently I've used Qt to design a plugin for MITK. I made a mesh editor plugin for fast 3D segmentation annotation for blob-like organs in medical images. C++ GUI development is slower mostly because it involves having to compile every attempt. Every change you make requires compiling to test! And that's very slow for large projects. When you have a compilation error, you have to compile again after fixing the error! You also have to spend the time to setup the build system to pull in all the dependencies (include paths/library paths) to even build the thing in the first place! GUI toolkits like Qt are massive with hundreds of include files and dozens of libraries... you need to use something like CMake that can navigate the numerous includes/libraries of a GUI toolkit like Qt. On top of CMake, knowledge of library dependencies in Qt really helps! For the end users, you have to do something like ship the Qt libraries and make sure those users have the proper dependencies or redistributables installed. Versions of dependencies is also an important consideration as different versions can break ABI! That's when you get dreaded symbol errors in Linux. Or you'll have to use something like Dependency Walker to figure out which symbols are missing on Windows. Now in Python... you just import some Qt module and can instantly start making windows, buttons, text boxes, combo boxes, etc.... I had a colleague make a fancy network topology editor with PyQt in just a matter of hours! This time frame would be nearly impossible in C++! The key here is that you don't need build systems or compiling to make changes and test GUI changes or functionality. It just works out of the box with scripting languages like Python! What do you get out of C++? Your program is probably going to run faster and it's likely more correct owing to all the compile-time type checks! What do you get out of Python, or other scripting languages? You'll be able to try things faster and with no project bootstrapping overhead. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://gist.github.com/a1cba47d62c009a378121398cc5477ea#gistcomment-4474454 or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABYOKGHHTXUOLDI3PSSD3FLWX6LV5BFKMF2HI4TJMJ2XIZLTSKBKK5TBNR2WLJDHNFZXJJDOMFWWLK3UNBZGKYLEL52HS4DFQKSXMYLMOVS2I5DSOVS2I3TBNVS3W5DIOJSWCZC7OBQXE5DJMNUXAYLOORPWCY3UNF3GS5DZVRZXKYTKMVRXIX3UPFYGLK2HNFZXIQ3PNVWWK3TUUZ2G64DJMNZZDAVEOR4XAZNEM5UXG5FFOZQWY5LFVA4TQOBUGA4DQNVHORZGSZ3HMVZKMY3SMVQXIZI . You are receiving this email because you commented on the thread. Triage notifications on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1477376905?ct=notification-email&mt=8&pt=524675 or Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.android&referrer=utm_campaign%3Dnotification-email%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_source%3Dgithub .

Actually with python you might not even get an error, shit just won't work properly and you will be left wondering WTF? Programs crash and don't tell you why etc. Python should not be used anywhere in medical fields.

@movy
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movy commented Feb 19, 2023

Python came to prominence when other alternatives were Perl, PHP or Ruby (or C++ hehe). It was a sane choice at the moment, but nowadays only a person who's whole coding experience consists of Scratch Jr, can pick Python as a starting point for their project. Which is a real bummer, as it truly feels like going backwards in time when you switch from literally anything modern to Python, and some of the brightest coders waste their (and ours, users') time on this mess.
I guess this thread includes people who used only Python and pray on Ven. Guido's portrait before bedtime and other people, who, you know, have experienced anything else in this world. It's a stupid idea trying to convince fanatics to walk away from their outdated beliefs, but it's fun to see them justifying their terrible life choices.

p.s. Community Service Announcement: JS/TS never required semicolons (apart from veeeeery rare edge cases, which can and should be rewritten anyway), and (IMHO) it looks way cleaner without them. So whoever brings up this point ("omg, ; at every line, yuck!") just displays his/hers level of (un)awareness about other languages.

@AkashicSeer
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AkashicSeer commented Feb 20, 2023 via email

@nslay
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nslay commented Feb 20, 2023

I do love C, but C has a lot of similar problems as C++. On top of that, a lot of the conveniences C++ offers, you have to roll yourself in C or use external libraries (e.g. C lacks STL). I didn't mean to scare you about C++ and I think you should prefer it over C. Not only do you get all of the powerful features of C++ and STL, it's mostly a superset of C and plays nicely with C!

If C/C++ are languages you are learning for practical reasons, I think C++ will land you more jobs than C. Otherwise, I'd just go straight to something like Rust... I know it's hyped a lot, but that one seems to have real potential. You get all the benefits and powers of C/C++ and some memory and thread safety C/C++ lacks. Heck, you can even write operating systems in Rust like RedoxOS! Although, memory safety in C++ is a lot better these days since you can generally use STL for all your data structure and memory management needs. You won't really be playing games with arrays and copies when STL is doing all of this for you under the covers.

@AkashicSeer
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I do love C, but C has a lot of similar problems as C++. On top of that, a lot of the conveniences C++ offers, you have to roll yourself in C or use external libraries (e.g. C lacks STL). I didn't mean to scare you about C++ and I think you should prefer it over C. Not only do you get all of the powerful features of C++ and STL, it's mostly a superset of C and plays nicely with C!

If C/C++ are languages you are learning for practical reasons, I think C++ will land you more jobs than C. Otherwise, I'd just go straight to something like Rust... I know it's hyped a lot, but that one seems to have real potential. You get all the benefits and powers of C/C++ and some memory and thread safety C/C++ lacks. Heck, you can even write operating systems in Rust like RedoxOS! Although, memory safety in C++ is a lot better these days since you can generally use STL for all your data structure and memory management needs. You won't really be playing games with arrays and copies when STL is doing all of this for you under the covers.

I'm working on software that interacts with 3d printers. I'll also be working on the firmware for the printer which is C++ So again I am not learning them for fun or for jobs, I am learning them to create software I need and will probably sell to others. I also do lots of microcontroller coding since I invent lots of things. So pretty much everything I am doing and will do will require C and C++. I'd like to know plain C because it leads into C++. I already know OOP so many of the C++ concepts should come pretty easily once I move to C++, actually I am learning both at the same time. One reason I want to know C is as you say, many libraries are in C and if I need to edit or create my own I need to know it.

Golang sounded very promising, but it just isn't. I don't want to deal with Golang and C while compiling or trying to cross compile. I'll check back with Golang in another 5 years to see if so many of the modules still need C.

@RobertAKARobin
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RobertAKARobin commented Feb 20, 2023

Please move conversations unrelated to this article to a different platform. You might try r/cscareerquestions or r/experienceddevs, for example. Thanks!

@AkashicSeer
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Please move conversations unrelated to this article to a different platform. You might try r/cscareerquestions or r/experienceddevs, for example. Thanks!

Sorry I have severe ADHD and little things get me off on a wild tangent.

@valsteen
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List comprehensions are held up as an excellent recent-ish addition to Python

PEP 202 – List Comprehensions
https://peps.python.org/pep-0202/
Created: 13-Jul-2000

@djared999
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It's easy to learn and read.

There are two types of coding in Python, procedural code (wihout using classes or methods), which is so similar to BASIC it could be considered a version of BASIC (although an odd one without arrays), and object code, which is completely different in operation. Most textbooks barely mention the latter.

Dynamic typing.

It has both, variables are typed but objects are not. For instance :

a=1

  • is always a float unless specified in Python 3.

400 ways (more or less) to interpolate strings.

Who bothers formatting the teletype output anymore ? Is is still 1973 ?

There's no way to make dicts or complex objects immutable.
map doesn't return a list, even though the whole point of a mapping function is to create one list from another. Instead it returns a map object, [which is pretty much useless] since it's missing append, reverse,

Objects are always mutable. They must be because of the way object code works.
By mutable I mean they accumulate the output of an operation (method).

An object is assigned to a class and then a method is called. The output of the method is used by the class function, so it must always accumulate in the object.

Since append, reverse and other dot methods are object code, the object will alter, so you need to put the output into another object or variable.

Everything in Python is a reference, not the actual memory space itself : "The name of a thing is not the same as a thing".

If you want immutability, you use a variable. Confusingly, the interpreter will happily use a variable as an object and vice versa. So you have to be very clear about whether something is an object or a variable.

For instance, above -

b= a.double

  • will produce a single namespace with a value of 2, which has two names, a and b.

Python does this in the opposite order:

Only in object code, because of the way that objects are put into classes. If Then is used in procedural code.

@masonova1
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masonova1 commented Apr 6, 2023

Objects are always mutable. They must be because of the way object code works.
By mutable I mean they accumulate the output of an operation (method).

I fail to see how this is a good assumption of a programmer's intent in a lot of cases. For example, it practically means that I can't have a container that is indexable by non-integer types and is also immutable. Creating a properly "immutable dict" requires me to first construct a dictionary, and then use a MappingProxyType and make sure I have no references to the underlying dictionary, which is just a wholly inadequate solution IMO. There's a reason frozendict frequently makes the rounds in PEPs and forums well after it was rejected. Even in the rejection notice, it couldn't avoid saying "even though it might lead to performance benefits, we just think it's too hard":

The potential of optimizing code using frozendict in PyPy is unsure; a lot of other things would have to change first. The same holds for compile-time lookups in general.

PEP 416, https://peps.python.org/pep-0416/#rejection-notice

(I have issues with a couple other claims on the rejection as well, particularly the "secure sandboxing" complaint -- that's not a problem with frozendict, it's a problem with using frozendict to harden Python or package guts, which was just one of the use cases presented.)

@michellebowerhz4
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and I was just going to teach him, disappointment

@helmetwearer
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It's funny to watch someone whine about readability of expressions, and then also whine about features that force readability.

The author here is pushing their own opinions as facts, typical of someone with a superiority complex.

@ZehMatt
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ZehMatt commented Jun 22, 2023

It's funny to watch someone whine about readability of expressions, and then also whine about features that force readability.

The author here is pushing their own opinions as facts, typical of someone with a superiority complex.

Forced readability? Who are you kidding, its pretty subjective.

@helmetwearer
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It's funny to watch someone whine about readability of expressions, and then also whine about features that force readability.
The author here is pushing their own opinions as facts, typical of someone with a superiority complex.

Forced readability? Who are you kidding, its pretty subjective.

Everything covered here is subjective, hence the next line. Go back to programming games in not Python

@ZehMatt
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ZehMatt commented Jun 23, 2023

It's funny to watch someone whine about readability of expressions, and then also whine about features that force readability.
The author here is pushing their own opinions as facts, typical of someone with a superiority complex.

Forced readability? Who are you kidding, its pretty subjective.

Go back to programming games in not Python

What?

@openbakk
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openbakk commented Jul 1, 2023

great

@Draugr-official
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It's funny to watch someone whine about readability of expressions, and then also whine about features that force readability.

The author here is pushing their own opinions as facts, typical of someone with a superiority complex.

Unsure why you are on about ad hominem all of a sudden.
You are a grown man with the capability of staying formal when discussing topics, especially one that you favor.

I see you're not only throwing passive aggressive insults at the OP, but also at other commentors.
Typical of someone with insecurity issues.

@RaphGL
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RaphGL commented Sep 4, 2023

I found this thread and wanted to contribute to it. I've been using python for years now, it was my second language after javascript but since then I've used many more languages, probably over 10 at this point, so I've grown to dislike the language thought I still use it as the ecosystem and wide availability means that for some constrained use cases python is still the most optimal language.

I agree with a lot of what was said in the original gist and the subsequent comments, but to add more reasons to it, here are mine.

Why Python sucks

  • Has a bad type checking (mypy is not good enough), this should be obvious as type hinting was retrofitted into the language and mypy is not integrated into the language itself, being a sort of "official" not official type checker that sometimes won't even be able to properly type check a simple variable = get_value()

  • Lacks basic stuff like visibility modifiers, enums, constants, resulting in the abuse of the object system to get these features and through runtimes like pydantic and inheriting classes (Enum, Dataclass, etc)

  • Performance is pretty bad, to the point that "avoiding for loops" is considered an optimization in the language and people spend copious amounts of hours extracting stuff into C FFIs even in situations where it's unnecessary in other languages

  • Bad packaging standards (all the virtual environments and multiple standards for dependency management which all suck since pip itself is very basic, poetry kinda "fixes" it by wrapping the insanity but it's not part of any standards so you won't be able to shoehorn it into every project)

  • No good way to bundle things, there's Pyinstaller which has very cold starts, there's Wheel which is just another way to bundle stuff to be installed by pip so still too basic

  • Dunders are almost too powerful, they can have a lot of hidden stuff running behind your back. They also allow overloading a lot of behavior which can potentially be used in ways that would be hard to debug or figure out. Just look at all the dunders you can define on this table. You can even overload the await keyword...

  • All implementations of the language besides CPython are "incomplete", they do not work with the entire ecosystem the way you can with other languages with multiple implementations (say C, Go, C++, etc), one of the reasons for this is because of how much CPython relies on C to work and usually other implementations focus on compatibility with specific libraries

@jtint24
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jtint24 commented Oct 12, 2023

I'm not the biggest fan of Python but I think this is more of a miscellany of small issues than real serious problems with Python. Like sure, sometimes writing tuples with one element can be a little annoying but syntactically, there's no way to unambiguously distinguish single-element tuples from expressions in parentheses. Single-element tuples are pretty rare anyways. The double-underscore methods aren't the most elegant way to have operator-overloading like features but I don't think it's fair to say that you have to "memorize" all of them, nor all the builtin functions; if I happen to forget what memoryview does, I can just google it. The whole "you have to just memorize the top-level functions" bit sticks out to me particularly because 69 isn't a tremendously great number of top-level functions? Like PHP has 5,000. I'll add that never in my experience writing Python have I been hamstrung by forgetting what abs is for. Also, some of these just aren't correct: MappingProxyType functions as an immutable dict even if "frozendict" isn't in the language (though I do agree lack of serious mutability is an issue with the language).

But I agree with most of your points, my problem with this summary is just that basically every language has problems on that scale. Regexes are clunky? Some of the syntax is weird? Basically every programmer will say that (or something equivalently minor) about even their favorite language. I certainly don't think these are the issues holding Python back from being a "great" language. Frankly, they'd all be pretty easy to fix if the python team thought they were important enough to do so (and perhaps were willing to break some backwards compatibility). The outdated and messy packaging system, underdeveloped database tools, and lack of some more modern features (like multiline lambdas or more powerful Rust/Swift-esque enums) are bigger and harder-to-fix challenges for it.

@ifeelagood
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Learning to read list comprehensions and memorising dunder functions is the same as learning the nuances of any languages. one can argue that of any language.

you also have a complex

@KDean-Dolphin
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KDean-Dolphin commented Dec 18, 2023

I've been running across Python enough in my work that I thought it best to learn the language well enough to understand what I'm reading. As I always do when learning a new language, I took a recent (small) project and rewrote it in the new language as I went along.

For reference, I'm old enough that yelling "Get off my lawn!" is totally appropriate but not old enough that my belt buckle is hiked up to my belly button. I grew up on BASIC in various flavours as a teenager, then Turbo Pascal in first year university, followed by C, Fortran, APL (a language invented on 1970s-grade psychedelics if there ever was one), Prolog (1980s-grade psychedelics), and assembly. I was an early adopter of C++ and later Java. I've dabbled in various custom programming languages for databases, I know my way around VBA for Excel automation, I've developed applications solo for Fortune 500 companies that have measurably saved millions of dollars a year, and I've led teams developing applications for broad commercial use.

Oh. Dear. God.

No intrinsic support for constants. White space (indentation and line breaks) as mandatory syntax. Class instance attributes declared in constructors. Class static attributes declared outside constructors. Private names (methods, classes, attributes) managed by the underscore convention. Static class initializers through custom annotations. Typing declared as "x: int" for variables and "x() -> int" for methods. Required use of "self" because scope detection is too hard. Duck typing, so that a variable can end up as a type other than the type declared for it, leaving error detection to runtime. Wrapper types around everything so that even basic integer manipulation is tens to hundreds of times slower, and a numerical library (NumPy) that is mysteriously even slower when trying to do something with those same integers.

I understand the need for simple languages to do simple tasks (VBA is a case in point). And if that's all Python was confined to, I wouldn't be having to learn it unless I found myself in an environment where it was the only choice. But, if a language is going to be used for something mission-critical, it had better be good enough to protect me from myself. I will make mistakes; any programmer who tells you they don't (I've worked with a few) is just not good enough to recognize their own limitations and is not someone you want on your team. Many mistakes are easy and boil down to simple coding errors (highlighted by a good IDE before the code is even compiled) or misuse of a complex library (RTFM, assuming there is one). Logic errors are, of course, harder, and require comprehensive testing, and what I don't want is to go through logic testing and get sidetracked by a duck typing bug that a sane language would have caught at compile time with a syntax error or at assignment time with a typecast exception.

Python is what you get when someone looks at the landscape of languages and says to themselves, "You know what? We need a simpler language for simpler tasks." and watches in horror as the language gets adopted in ways for which it is totally unsuitable and never intended. And then, to address the problems that invariably come with languages that don't protect programmers from themselves, a whole community rises up to address the shortcomings and we end up with a language that is neither as simple as intended nor as fit for purpose as far more mature languages. It's the cripple and the tailor joke come to life.

Get off my lawn.

@dtonhofer
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dtonhofer commented Mar 27, 2024

Python is just a worse Perl. And you cannot even retcon use strict into it.

How much worse? I can't say (full disclosure: I like Perl - for some tasks. If code has been written in reasonable ways. With all warnings and strict, i.e. "must declare variable" and related gobbledygook, switched on. And files kept small and everything properly organized into modules.)

Plus the forced indent syntax makes it so that you cannot write one-liners in Stack Overflow comments. Hah! 😞

But at least it's well documented.

Apparently many people believe it's somehow "readable". But "readability" (for reasons of maintainability, or so it is said) should be a concern after "do you have proper static typing". Any-typed mutable stuff rather negates the effort. Plus the forced indentation seems to generate bad feature interactions with the rest of the language design.

Python for scripting the odd task, sure. But as someone on the Internet (rightly) said, it's very ill-advised, for economic or reliability issues, to try to build large software systems in Python.

And then can anyone rationally explain this:

my_list = ['foo', 'bar', 'baz']

def f():
    my_list = ['qux', 'quux'] # my_list is local to f()!
    my_list[0] = 'ggg'

f()

assert my_list[0] == 'foo'
assert my_list[1] == 'bar'
assert my_list[2] == 'baz'

def g():
    my_list[0] = 'texx' # this accesses the global my_list!

g()

assert my_list[0] == 'texx'
assert my_list[1] == 'bar'
assert my_list[2] == 'baz'

# But the interpreter / (bytecode compiler?) does not like this
# 
# def h():
#     my_list[0] = 'aloha'  # "cannot access local variable 'my_list'"
#     my_list = ['qux', 'quux']
#
# h()

def h():
    global my_list # now we can modify the global list
    my_list[0] = 'aloha'
    my_list = ['qux', 'quux']

h()

assert my_list[0] == 'qux'
assert my_list[1] == 'quux'

I just had to get this off my chest. Enough of this, I have an exercise in NumPy to do 😓 . And then it's over to Dart.

@dtonhofer
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@KDean-Dolphin

Prolog (1980s-grade psychedelics),

Hah! No, Prolog is absolute genius once you understand how it even works (i had to reset my assumptions).

If there were some serious investment in Logic Programming instead of everyone throwing money at trying to reinvent a square wheel with the whole JavaScript ecosystem (a practical joke, shurely?) one might see some progress in computer science. There are a lot of excellent ideas out there.

Meanwhile, I guess there is Mercury (underappreciated too, needs a proper IDE)

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