Python has overtaken JavaScript as the most-used language on GitHub, according to the code-hosting platform's latest Octoverse report. The company
  •  Kissaki   ( @Kissaki@programming.dev ) English
    5•17 hours ago

    Python’s major pro is its simple, straightforward syntax, which excels at data handling. This has made it popular with novices of all shades […]

    For first-timer coders, Python is easier to learn, understand, and adapt than many low-level programming languages […]

    Is python being easy to learn actually true? I can see it being easier than low-level programming. But there’s other alternatives like C# and Java that certainly seem much better and easier to me. Especially when you consider the ecosystem around only writing code.

    Plus, the Python language is a steadfast feature in the desktop Linux software landscape. It’s preinstalled on most Linux distributions, boasts extensive library support, and can be used to fashion very cool (as well as very basic) Qt, GTK, and other toolkit UIs.

    It’s certainly available, and more readily available on Linux. The whole v2 v3 mess was lackluster. But I guess preinstalled is convenient, and more accessible than installable Java or whatever.

    I’ve never seen JavaScript or Python popularity as evidence or correlating with actual qualities. More with a self-promoting usage. Python was being used in science, then in AI, then AI became popular. To me, it seems like a natural propagation consequence more than simplicity or features over other frameworks and languages.

  •  Daemon Silverstein   ( @dsilverz@thelemmy.club ) 
    2•16 hours ago

    As for data science using Python, something tells me that this has to do with memory heap capacities. I’m not sure about Python’s max memory heap, but Javascript through Node.js seems to have only 512MB. I’ve been using Node.js to deal with big datasets and my most recent experimentation stumbled across the need of loading 100 million numbers to the RAM: while my PC has a fair amount of physical RAM (12GB) and a great part of it was available, it’ll simply error when filling an array. I needed an additional parameter, --max-old-space-size, so Node.js could deal with such amount of data. I didn’t try the same task with Python because I’m used to Javascript (yet I’m done some things in Python), but I wonder how much memory can Python hold until an error like “out of memory” happens, because ML models (for example, those hosted and served in HuggingFace) loads training weights with dozens of GBs

    •  bjornsno   ( @bjornsno@lemm.ee ) 
      42•2 days ago

      I code both typescript and python professionally, and python is almost as much of a mess, just a different kind of mess. The package manager ecosystem is all over the place, nobody is agreeing on a build system, and the type system is still unable to represent fairly simple concepts when it comes to function typing. Also tons of libraries just ignore types altogether. I love it, but as a competitor to JavaScript in the messiness department it’s not a good horse.

          •  FizzyOrange   ( @FizzyOrange@programming.dev ) 
            3•2 days ago

            In fairness that approach hasn’t really worked in other languages. It was so unpopular in C++ that they actually removed the feature, which is almost unheard of. Java supports it too but it’s pretty rarely used in my experience. The only place I’ve seen it used is in Android. It’s unpopular enough there that Kotlin doesn’t support it.

          •  jjjalljs   ( @jjjalljs@ttrpg.network ) 
            2•1 day ago

            Interesting. I’ve never felt a need for this, and as the other reply here said it was really unpopular in other languages.

            I would have guessed you would have said something about how it’s annoying to type callable arguments, and how Protocol exists but doesn’t seem that widely known.

            •  bjornsno   ( @bjornsno@lemm.ee ) 
              1•24 hours ago

              Definitely those used to be pain points, but they do exist now so type erasure after decorator application isn’t a problem anymore, which used to be another huge one for me.

              The discussion around how unpopular it was in other languages seems like such an obvious side track to me. Typing in general went out of fashion and then made a comeback when it was opt-in, why wouldn’t the same apply to exceptions? Of course I’m not wanting warnings in every func call because of a potential MemoryCorruptionError, but if a library has some set of known exceptions as a de facto part of its interface then that’s currently completely unknown to me and my static type checker.

              One kinda bad example is playwright. Almost all playwright functions have the chance to raise a TimeoutError, but even if you know this you’ll probably shoot yourself in the foot at least once because it’s not the built-in TimeoutError, oh no, it’s a custom implementation from the library. If you try to simply try...except TimeoutError:, the exception will blow right by you and crash your script, you’ve got to import the correct TimeoutError. If it was properly typed then pyright would be able to warn you that you still need to catch the other kind of TimeoutError. It’s a bad example because like I said almost all playwright functions can raise this error so you’d get a lot of warnings, but it also demonstrates well the hidden interface problem we have right now, and it’s the most recent one that screwed me, so it’s the one I remember off the top of my head.

    •  FizzyOrange   ( @FizzyOrange@programming.dev ) 
      6•2 days ago

      Typescript is far nicer than Python though. Well I will give Python one point: arbitrary precision integers was absolutely the right decision. Dealing with u64s in Typescript is a right pain.

      But apart from that it’s difficult to see a single point on which Python is clearly better than Typescript:

      • Static typing. Pyright is great but it’s entirely optional and rarely used. Typescript obviously wins here.
      • Tooling. Deno is fantastic but even if we regress to Node/NPM it’s still a million miles better than the absolute dog shit pile of vomit that is Pip & venv. Sorry Python but admit your flaws. uv is a shining beacon of light here but I have little hope that the upstream Python devs will recognise that they need to immediately ditch pip in favour of officially endorsing uv. No. They’ll keep it on the sidelines until the uv devs run out of hope and money and give up.
      • Performance. Well I don’t need to say more.
      • Language sanity. They’re pretty on par here I think - both so-so. JavaScript has big warts (the whole prototype system was clearly a dumb idea) but you can easily avoid them, especially with ESLint. But Python has equally but warts that Pylint will tell you about, e.g. having to tediously specify the encoding for every file access.
      • Libraries & ecosystem. Again I would say there’s no much in it. You’d obviously be insane to use Python for anything web related (unless it’s for Django which is admittedly decent). On the other hand Python clearly dominates in AI, at least if you don’t care about actually deploying anything.
      •  namingthingsiseasy   ( @namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev ) 
        2•2 days ago

        What is so bad about virtual environments? I found them to be really nice and useful when I developed in Python over about 5-ish years. It was really nice being able to have separate clean environments for installing libraries and executing things.

        Granted, I only used Python as a solo developer, so if there are shortcomings that emerge when working with other developers, then I would not be aware of them…

        Edit: also, performance is a bit more of a subtle topic. For numerical logic, Python actually is (probably) much better than a lot of its competitors thanks to numpy and numexpr. For conditional logic, I would agree that it’s not the best, but when you consider developer velocity, it’s a clearly worthwhile tradeoff since frameworks like Django are so popular.

      •  jjjalljs   ( @jjjalljs@ttrpg.network ) 
        6•2 days ago

        Language sanity. They’re pretty on par here I think

        [1] + [2]
"12"

        A sane language, you say.

        const foo = 'hello' 
const bar = { foo: 'world'}
console.log(bar)
// { "foo": "world" }

        the absolute dog shit pile of vomit that is Pip & venv

        I’ve worked professionally in python for several years and I don’t think it’s ever caused a serious problem. Everything’s in docker so you don’t even use venv.

        •  FizzyOrange   ( @FizzyOrange@programming.dev ) 
          7•2 days ago

          A sane language, you say.

          Yes:

          Operator '+' cannot be applied to types 'number[]' and 'number[]'.

          We’re talking about Typescript here. Also I did say that it has some big warts, but you can mostly avoid them with ESLint (and Typescript of course).

          Let’s not pretend Python doesn’t have similar warts:

          >>> x = -5
>>> y = -5
>>> x is y
True
>>> x = -6
>>> y = -6
>>> x is y
False
>>> x = -6; y = -6; x is y
True

          >>> isinstance(False, int)
True

          >>> [f() for f in [lambda: i for i in range(10)]]
[9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9]

          There’s a whole very long list here. Don’t get be wrong, Python does a decent job of not being crazy. But so does Typescript+ESLint.

          I’ve worked professionally in python for several years and I don’t think it’s ever caused a serious problem. Everything’s in docker so you don’t even use venv.

          “It’s so bad I have resorted to using Docker whenever I use Python.”

          •  jjjalljs   ( @jjjalljs@ttrpg.network ) 
            3•2 days ago

            Why would you use the is operator like that?

            The lambda thing is from late binding, which I’ve had come up at work once. https://docs.python-guide.org/writing/gotchas/#late-binding-closures.

            “It’s so bad I have resorted to using Docker whenever I use Python.”

            Do you not use containers when you deploy ? Everywhere I’ve worked in the past like 10 years has moved to containers.

            Also this is the same energy as “JavaScript is so bad you’ve resorted to using a whole other language: Typescript”

            To your point, typescript does solve a lot of problems. But the language it’s built on top of it is extremely warty. Maybe we agree on that.

            •  FizzyOrange   ( @FizzyOrange@programming.dev ) 
              2•2 days ago

              Why would you use the is operator like that?

              Why would you add two arrays like that?

              Do you not use containers when you deploy

              No because I am not using Python to make a web app. That’s not the only thing people write you know…

              JavaScript is so bad you’ve resorted to using a whole other language: Typescript

              Well yeah. Typescript isn’t really a new language. It’s just type annotations for JavaScript (except for enums; long story). But yes JavaScript is pretty bad without Typescript.

              But Typescript isn’t a cop-out like Docker is.

              But the language it’s built on top of it is extremely warty. Maybe we agree on that.

              Yeah definitely. You need to ban the warts but Typescript & ESLint do a pretty good job of that.

              I mean I would still much rather write Dart or Rust but if I had to pick between Typescript and Python there’s absolutely no way I’d pick Python (unless it was for AI).

              •  jjjalljs   ( @jjjalljs@ttrpg.network ) 
                2•1 day ago

                Why would you add two arrays like that? Because I want to combine two lists.

                The is operator is for identity, not equality. Your example is just using it weirdly in a way that most people wouldn’t do.

                No because I am not using Python to make a web app. That’s not the only thing people write you know… Most of what I’ve worked on has been webapps or services that support them :shrug:

                Typescript and Python there’s absolutely no way I’d pick Python (unless it was for AI).

                Agree to disagree then. We could argue all day but I think it’s mostly opinion about what warts and tradeoffs are worth it, and you don’t seem like you have no idea what you’re talking about. Sometimes I meet junior developers who have only ever used javascript, and it’s like (to borrow another contentious nerd topic) like meeting someone who’s only ever played D&D talking about game design.

                •  FizzyOrange   ( @FizzyOrange@programming.dev ) 
                  1•1 day ago

                  The is operator is for identity, not equality. Your example is just using it weirdly in a way that most people wouldn’t do.

                  The + operator is for numbers or strings, not arrays. Your example is just using it weirdly in a way that most people wouldn’t do.

                  I’m not defending Javascript’s obviously terrible behaviour there. Just pointing out that Python has obviously terrible behaviours too. In both cases the solution is “don’t do that, and use static analysis to make sure you don’t do it accidentally”.

                  Sometimes I meet junior developers who have only ever used javascript, and it’s like (to borrow another contentious nerd topic) like meeting someone who’s only ever played D&D talking about game design.

                  Yeah I think you can generalise that to “have only ever used one language”. I would say Python and Javascript are pretty close on the “noob level”. By which I mean if you meet someone who has only ever written C++, Java, or Rust or whatever they’re going to be a class above someone who has only ever written Python or Javascript.

    •  Reptorian   ( @Reptorian@programming.dev ) 
      2•2 days ago

      Scala does look nice. Just a quick syntax view makes me want to give it a whirl when I want an alternative to Python. I used to code in C++, and C#. I use G’MIC (DSL) as my main. Scala seems right up my alley.