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by eru 1173 days ago
That might be true, but it seems to generally fall under the category of 'relevant 15+ years ago', doesn't it?
2 comments

How do you qualify relevancy? Your own personal bubble and bias? Adoption and usage?

Pull requests and stars on github? That might be a start.

https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2022/4 https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/stars/2022/4

Though you may say but but alltheprivaterepos! Then I challenge you to back up what you mean by relevance and prove python is a category of relevant 15+ years ago.

I'm arguing against the point that it clearly did have the easiest syntax compared to the competition back then and not because Google was using it.

Even if it doesn't have the best syntax now (which I doubt), the tooling and libraries make it a better choice over any language that have an edge over python syntax.

> I'm arguing against the point that it clearly did have the easiest syntax compared to the competition back then and not because Google was using it.

Maybe, not sure? My point was that both the syntax and Google using it was more relevant 15 years ago than now.

(I don't have much of an opinion on the 15+ years ago thing.)

I don't see any reason for it to be less true now.

Is python syntax worse than any brand new languages like rust or go? Absolutely not. It's still better.

Did Google stop using it? I don't think so, but I also don't think people picked it just because Google did.

Python's syntax is ok.

Btw, I wish they would take some inspiration from Haskell's syntax.

Haskell also has significant whitespace, but its defined as syntactic sugar for a more traditionally syntax with curly braces and semicolons.

Approximately no-one uses that curly-brace syntax, but it's good for two things:

- silences the naysayers

- more importantly: allows you to copy-paste code even into forms that mess up your indentation.

In a few years, none of this is going to matter anyway since it is likely we will be able to automatically translate everything cheaply.