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by retrocryptid 1054 days ago
Python is a horrible language, but not for the reasons the author gives. Just because range() returns a generator doesn't mean the whole language is lazy. Several Lisps allow something like duck typing and they're not horrible. It is possible to reason about program behaviour in dynamic languages, but JavaScript certainly makes it hard.

Python is a horrible language because it is not a language. It is a family of languages that changes every October. Sure, 3.x doesn't introduce as many backwards-incompatible changes per version as 2.x did, but that's like saying World War I wasn't horrible because towards the end fewer people seemed to be dying every week.
1 comments
neoncontrails 1054 days ago
I've been programming in Python for most of the past 10 years, and I've never experienced a regression in backwards-compatibility between minor releases. What problems have you had?
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retrocryptid 1054 days ago
The syntax of the language changes every version in non-backwards-compatible ways.

If you have a couple scripts, sure, maybe you're not affected. But when you buy a company that shat out 90kloc of python and then all the employees quit, it's not a happy day.

And sure... I shouldn't have used those features. I get it. I'm the one who's bad because I'm calling your baby ugly. Even though I wasn't the one that originally wrote that code.

Though I did write some code that used package variables. And then the syntax for package variables changed, but that was an easy fix. And then the scope of package variables changed to be class variables, which is totally fine, but harder to find. Then the syntax changed again, but in a way that made it harder to fine. And then the debugger stopped working if you enabled async io for a few versions.

Python is for total amateur code fluffers.

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neoncontrails 1054 days ago
Which syntactic features have changed in ways that aren't backwards compatible? I've had some minor headaches, don't get me wrong, but in each case those headaches are a result of interface changes to common objects, like Exception-types. Python has added some syntactic sugar between minor releases, sure, but never at the expense of backwards compatibility.
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retrocryptid 1053 days ago
Package variables. Class variables. Syntax changed between 2.3, 2.5 and 2.7. And the semantics changed somewhere between 2.3 and 2.7.
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neoncontrails 1053 days ago
Wow, didn't realize folks were still actively developing on Python 2.x. FWIW, the Python steering committee takes backwards-compatibility pretty seriously these days. Here's a recent mailing list discussion on it's decision to reject a popular PEP on the grounds that it would have broken Pydantic: https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-dev@python.org/...
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