

Python is One of the Most Popular Programming Languages - octopus
http://www.infernodevelopment.com/python-becoming-most-popular-programming-language#comment-10493

======
RiderOfGiraffes
Here's a link to the "article", instead of to a random comment:

[http://www.infernodevelopment.com/python-becoming-most-
popul...](http://www.infernodevelopment.com/python-becoming-most-popular-
programming-language)

~~~
intellectronica
Please, can the original poster edit the link? It really doesn't make sense to
link to an anchor in the template section.

------
intellectronica
It's true (and it's great news) that Python is becoming one of the most
important and popular programming languages, but this article does a pretty
poor job at showing this and explaining why.

Other than Python's popularity for web development (where it faces competition
from Ruby and PHP) Python has been adopted in many other settings, and that
probably contributed quite a lot to the numbers indexed. For example, in the
last year many of the biggest financial institutions have moved to developing
critical parts of their systems in Python. In fact, it can probably be said
that Python became popular _despite_ not becoming very popular for web
development until quite late in the game.

------
Dobbs
I doubt I'm the only one but I really don't like python.

Python makes simple things hard. It has no switch statements, no lambdas. It
has significant white space (I've tried and tried but I can't get over it).

There is no simple way to drop down to the command line which means I can't
easily use it to replace the scripting I have to do on a day in and day out
purpose.

On a side note I greatly prefer go's approach to white space. It's not
significant but there is a piece of software that rewrites code to the
"standard".

~~~
d0mine
_> Python makes simple things hard._

Some examples might help here.

 _> It has no switch statements_

Python uses if/else, hashtables, OO constructs instead
<http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3103/>

_> no lambdas._

Python has lambdas, but their usage is discouraged in preference of explicit
code blocks and named functions. You can use them if you must.

 _> It has significant white space_

The indentation level of your statements is significant, but not whitespace in
general <http://www.secnetix.de/olli/Python/block_indentation.hawk>

_> There is no simple way to drop down to the command line which means I can't
easily use it to replace the scripting I have to do on a day in and day out
purpose._

Some people find Python usable for system administration. There is a book
"Python for Unix and Linux System Administration" (2008).

~~~
Dobbs
> Some examples might help here.

I mostly script things so my programs are generally the type that are a bit
too complicated for bash. Python makes this type of programming difficult.

For example. I want to run a command and get its output back. I'm then going
to go and parse the output and preform transformations on it.

In order to accomplish this I have to use popen to open multiple pipes to the
program and then read all of its output. I feel like I'm writing C.

> Python uses if/else, hashtables, OO constructs instead

Both if/else and hashtables are dirty hacks. Neither allows clean code. OO
constructs can work but require large amount of setup to preform a simple task
like parsing getopts.

> Python has lambdas, but their usage is discouraged in preference of explicit
> code blocks and named functions. You can use them if you must.

You are correct. I replied to another person's comment but haven't/won't edit
my previous post.

> The indentation level of your statements is significant, but not whitespace
> in general

My apologies for using common terminology for significant indentation,
significant indentation is what I meant. Either way I (subjective) dislike it.
I personally find it harder to read than braces or ruby's end.

> Some people find Python usable for system administration.

I will strongly disagree here. I've tried to use Python on several occasions
for system administration.

> There is a book "Python for Unix and Linux System Administration" (2008)

I'll check it out maybe it will show me somethings that change my views.

A lot of this is entirely subjective. At least for my type of work I find
Python to be an annoyance more than a helper.

Though to be fair I find all languages to be pretty ugly/nasty when you take
then out of their designed use.

~~~
xiongchiamiov
Python is my language of choice for most things. That being said, it's not
really a good choice for text processing (that is, using regular expressions)
or glue scripts - I find Ruby to be an excellent successor to Perl for those.

For anything that I expect to be maintained, especially by someone else, I
tend towards Python, though, because the language seems geared towards that.
Significant indentation is nice because your code does what it looks like it
does. Docstrings are a godsend. The approach to modules and namespaces is
quite helpful _. Named arguments to functions prevent silly ordering mistakes.

_ I just finished writing up my thoughts on this in a bit of a longer form.
You can read them at [http://changedmy.name/2011/02/16/why-pythons-modules-
are-bad...](http://changedmy.name/2011/02/16/why-pythons-modules-are-
badass.html) , if you like. I'm well aware that I'm not the best writer, nor
am I the most educated or experienced person in this field, so any criticism
is welcome.

------
alexeiz
The article is about the author that has been a fan of PHP for a long time and
now he loves Python. This is the base of his claim of Python popularity.

------
jefe78
Its not surprising. We make extensive use of Python. Its great.

I get so busy doing so many things that I often don't develop for months at a
time. This used to be a problem when I used C. With Python its a non-issue.

------
ot
> [...] Python, Ruby, Haskell, Ada are gaining popularity

Ada???

~~~
gte910h
Defense Contractors

