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by ubernostrum 3631 days ago
migrate to other languages, such as Go

This depends heavily on the type of work someone is doing. People doing numeric/scientific computing work with Python can't really do this, for example, because there's a distinct lack of other languages with equivalents to the libraries and tooling Python gives them for their work. And that's a chicken/egg feedback loop problem: Go needs the libraries and tools, but in order get them needs people to move, but in order to get people to move needs the libraries/tools, and so on.
2 comments
rspeer 3631 days ago
And if you don't have time to switch from Python 2 to 3, you definitely don't have time to switch to Go.
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tanlermin 3631 days ago
Julia will be a suitable (superior) alternative soon.
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ubernostrum 3631 days ago
Remember that the other thing about Python is that it's got good support for other types of programming -- for example, I work at a company which settled on Python (in part) because it allows a single language end-to-end. Our data ingestion, analytics/processing/number crunching, and end-user applications based on the data can all be built in Python, and even if you're not a domain expert in one of those areas you can at least read code to see what's going on and not be totally lost.
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tanlermin 3631 days ago
Julia can do all that. its also a general programming language
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rspeer 3631 days ago
It's like you're recommending a restaurant by saying that its food is "edible".

All in all, this is a bad recommendation. Julia is version 0.4. Its syntax changes with every version. It is not going to be stable soon. It is so far from stable that it doesn't have a plan for what stability will look like.

It's fine if you want to get in on the ground floor of a programming language, or to learn a new language for the fun of it, but it's completely unreasonable to suggest that you could replace a programming language that people use for their jobs that way.

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nameless912 3631 days ago
Well sure, in the same way MATLAB is a general programming language. It can be done, but it'll make you feel icky.
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keypusher 3631 days ago
I've seen people saying this for years, yet I don't know anyone that has actually switched over. The people I do who have tried came right back to Python, often within a few days or weeks.
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tanlermin 3631 days ago
careful continuing that linear extrapolation...I think it's about to hit a tipping point due to packages and tooling being much better.
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