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by Zingler 1206 days ago
> It’s frequently the second best language but it’s the second best language for anything.

This myth wasn't even true many years ago, it certainly isn't true today. You can build a mobile app, game, distributed systems, OS, GUI, Web frontend, "realtime" systems, etc in Python, but it is a weak choice for most of those things (and many others) let alone the second best option.
2 comments
brookst 1206 days ago
The saying does not mean that in a rigorous evaluation Python would be second best out of all programming ecosystems for all problems.

The saying means that for any given problem, there is a better choice, but second best is the language you know which has all of the tools to get the job done, so the answer is probably just a bunch of pip installs, imports, and glue code.

It’s kind of like “the best camera is the one you have with you” — it’s a play on the differing definitions of “best” to highlight the value of feasibility over technical perfection.

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toastal 1206 days ago
When I switched from PHP to Python years ago I had the same feeling as the OP, then it became the third best, then the fourth, then situational when object-orientation makes sense, then for just scripting, and now... unsure beyond a personal developer comfort/productivity preference. TUIs and GUIs built on Python on my machine seem to be the first things to have issues during system upgrades because of the package management situation.
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