[TylerE]

I don't think there is any sort of long-term future in anything "Python". I think a successful modern language has to have the potential for efficient concurrency baked in, which isn't really possible without breaking compatibility, and the Python community would never survive another round like the 2->3 transition. (And I'm not convinced the community really survived that one either, given the amount of ongoing bitterness about the whole situation).

[coldtea]

Err, did you notice that Python is in the top 3 language in TIOBE (up from 4), and named "Language of the year"?

What bizarro bubble do you live in?

[timothycrosley]

Python is very healthy at the moment, and still growing! However, I think that makes it even more important as a community that we don't rest on our laurels and we fix the issues we do have. CPU concurrency is definitely one of those issues.

[guggle]

> CPU concurrency is definitely one of those issues.

Yes, and each new version actually adresses that, one step at a time. (see https://bugs.python.org/issue35813 for example).

[TylerE]

Indicators like TIOBE are VERY lagging. Like 5-10 years

[coldtea]

In my assessment, not really. They are surprisingly spot on (for the top spots and singling out contenders).

Not to mention the language landscape is almost static at the top. Nobody's gonna came and take Python, Java, C, C++, JS, out in the next 10-15 years...

Only a huge self-blunder, like the Perl 5 -> 6 transition, and only at much more volatile time (when paradigms change, e.g. when web dev changed from CGI, Perl 5 had already lost the web framework scene to PHP, Rails, Django and the like even before losing its main niche back then - admin work) can do any serious damage to a top language...

Anyway, let's check in 5 years...

[TylerE]

Well, for instance, TIOBE has Rust at #34, below such mainstays as ABAP, COBOL, and Scratch. It has Groovy above Ruby.

[dagw]

Well, for instance, TIOBE has Rust at #34, below such mainstays as ABAP, COBOL

Do you believe that to be incorrect? I think you're probably underestimating how widely used those languages are in massive, "boring" companies around the world. Rust may be the new cool kid, and may even be the future, but the number of companies around the world that have adopted Rust for anything significant today is minuscule.

It has Groovy above Ruby.

Again, Java is everywhere, and many Java shops have added Groovy to their workflow where it makes sense. Ruby is barely used outside a small of number of tech companies.

[coldtea]

Well, Rust is probably well under COBOL, that's for certain.

Not in momentum, but there are tons of installations, and billions of lines of code in COBOL ever churning. If LOC was the main criterium (and not just a factor), and if COBOL projects were hosted in GitHub, most languages with be dwarfed by it.

And Groovy is semi-popular in the Java world, which is huge itself.

But as I said, TIOBE is very good in the top-10 languages, and for spotting new major contenders (by how they jump up spots).

It's not great for relative ranking of the longer tail of languages above the top-10 / top-20...

[timothycrosley]

> I think a successful modern language has to have the potential for efficient concurrency baked in

I agree with this!

> I don't think there is any sort of long-term future in anything "Python".

I disagree with this :)

I think Python has efficient IO concurrency built-in already with async, and I feel it is likely that it finds a way to work out CPU bound concurrency long-term, as projects like sub-shells with channel communication demonstrate.

[nine_k]

Efficient CPU concurrency needs either fine-grained locking (and removal of GIL), or data immutability.

Both seem rather hard to implement.

I predict that for CPU-intensive tasks, you'll keep using extensions in native code (like numpy or pytorch), or keep passing serialized objects through queues in multiprocessing setups.

[qaq]

https://github.com/jreese/aiomultiprocess The above is suffecient at FB scale for fairly intensive processing. Python is also sufficient for running quite a good bit of Instagram. I know some startups like to deploy over-engineered solutions but in reality Python is sufficient in many use-cases. You can always drop down to Cython if you have some hot path you need to optimize. (or Rust).

[dmix]

Data science/AI people breathed a whole lot of life into Python. I'm curious where it would be if they had went elsewhere.

[edraferi]

R for the ecosystem, Julia for the performance & future proofing.

[coldtea]

What "future proofing"? It's not like Julia is "the future" it's just a contended, and it's not doing that good at that either...

[pjmlp]

Its adoption at banks and life science research labs tells another story.

Naturally if the community finally gathers around PyPy, that might change.

[coldtea]

>Its adoption at banks and life science research labs tells another story.

In all 10 of the places it was adopted?

Compared to Python with the thousands of deployments "at banks and life science research labs" it's a no show....

[pjmlp]

Compared to UNIX with the thousands of deployments "at a couple of universities campus and hobbists" it's a no show....