[Dove]

I want to break up with Python, too. The one-size-fits-all philosophy that runs through the language from end to end leaves me feeling like I'm typing with three fingers. Sometimes its Right Way really is okay or even right, but sometimes I'd really, really, rather use something else. I worry about a generation of programmers for whom this is the first, main, and possibly only thing they've learned. I worry about them being brain damaged.

But where would I go? I clicked through hoping to find a good suggestion, and found none.

Python has become the lingua franca of programming, in many contexts, in many fields. You don't have a choice. You have to be able to read it, if you want to read what people are doing. You have to be able to write it, if you want people to read your stuff. It's where the libraries are. It's where stuff is happening. For better or for worse, Python won.

Even if I don't care about any of that, I really don't know where to go.

I really loved perl. I loved the powerful expression and conciseness. I miss it. But perl 5 is old, and it shows -- a lot of good ideas have come along in the last couple decades, and a lot of things that seemed like good ideas at the time really haven't worked out. A decade or so ago, I was excited about perl 6, but it doesn't seem to have worked out.

I don't like python. But I don't know what to replace it with. Javascript and Ruby seem like the serious options to me, and it's hard to take the one seriously, and the other is so niche that that itself feels like a serious drawback. I want a general purpose scripting language that can do small scripts well (Messes allowed! Shortcuts encouraged! Power in a small space!) and grow to large projects well (Thoughtful object system! Good package management! Good support for alternative paradigms!)

I just can't figure out what that would be.

[411111111111111]

That question can't be answered without knowing what kind of programs you're writing. You got a lot of options if you're thinking about websites/apis, almost none if it's machine learning and basically everything is better if you're thinking about GUI applications.

[Dove]

You know, I hadn't thought about it that way before. Perhaps the dream of a general purpose language was always incoherent. Perhaps the mess you get when perl tries to offer options to do everything well, and the suffocation you get when python tries to do everything the same way, are inevitable. Maybe using one language for small and large projects was never going to end well -- maybe either the language or the programmers were always going to do it wrong.

I suppose I have been assuming that the best policy is to do as the Romans for a long time now. Windows apps are C++ (or is it C# now?) because that's how things are over there. Android is Java, or Scala if you must -- at any rate, you hardly get to pick. Iphone requires learning Objective C. Jquery for frontend, or whatever the cool kids are doing; PHP on the back is good enough for most of the web, and it's good enough for you. And as you say, in ML, Python is not optional.

And as I think about it, I've been using specialized languages in specialized contexts for a long time. It seems the knowing the underlying language is only ever part of the problem -- you have to learn the specialized language for what you're doing, whether it's GL for graphics or your web framework's way of doing things, or MFC or .NET, or . . .

Yeah. Small tools for specific purposes, and follow the local ecosystem. Things have been going that way, and it's probably a good answer.

When in Rome, then. I like that answer. Thanks.