The Untold Story of Python

About five years ago I needed to write a data converter program for some land surveying software I had, as the supplied one didn't do what I needed. Perl was my first language of choice as regular expressions are integral with the language, but Python had some very user-friendly modules available such that I chose to write it in said language instead. Python is indeed highly useful!!

Fond memories of Borland Pascal

Long time programmer, java is the best. The type system java provides, python comes nowhere.

Python always 🎉 🔥🎉😊

I still love x86 assembly....😀

Numpy and other data science libraries are very fast - the reason being that underlying code is written in C/C++. For example, matrix multiplication. Python runtime is a glue between language and its libraries.

More than 5 years ago, I watched a newbie replace one of our large server programs at Bell Canada with a python program he wrote in an afternoon. The original was full of all kinds of operating system calls to get past short comings of the host language (which I will not reveal here) and communicate with an ISAM database. The newbie moved everything over to MySQL. Anyway. from that point on, I learned python then never looked back.

Why should an app that can be written in Python be instead written in C++, Rust or C?

Just choosing a more complicated tool doesn't make you smart. Choosing the best way to solve a problem would.

mad respect he built a really intuitive and easy language to learn.. it's my favorite language so far..

"Why did Python win?"

Python is slow, even for a scripting language. It is many times slower than Perl.

"batteries included"

As a Tcl programmer I STILL scoff at its forced indentation.

A story of R would be nice.

The problem with smart people, is that they don't know how to make things user friendly, because they themselves don't need things to be user friendly. So C++ is only for the very smart, whereas Python is for the masses.

What was wrong with BASIC? 🤣

BS

😂😂

I broke with the disease that’s Python when they dropped the only thing it had going for it “there’s only one way to do something”. Suddenly there dozens of ways and idiomatic methods are changing every release like with JavaScript and rust. And that’s BAD! A language needs to be small and stable, not change every release. Old Perl code still runs on new interpreters, try that with Python. And Python is FUcKING slow! Just write it in C/C++, C#/Jaca (unless you run embedded runtimes are inefficient) Zig, Rust or Go.

Because our industry is run by idiots, people who can’t actually code in real (fast languages) and thus they work in a terrible slow, insecure language that consumes more power than a hungry whale.

I am honestly rooting for Mojo.

Java recent updates have made it the most powerful programming language ever.
My professor always say - You will know the power of Java , as you progress in your career.

As always, it depends. I've written software in assembly language, FORTRAN, C, C++, Java, AWK, and others too numerous to mention -- or remember, for that matter. I recently wrote a Control Data 160-A emulator in Python, and oh, does that date me.

Everything said in the video is true. Python's straightforward semantics and simple structure attracts developers and makes them welcome. It's especially kind to beginners, easy to learn as you go. Job done ... until another developer has to maintain the code. Then, Python's greatest attraction, its flexibility can become a huge challenge because a variable's data type can be difficult to determine just from looking at the code.

A colleague and I once spent several days adding two lines of code to a Python application. We knew where to add the code from the very beginning. Unfortunately, the code provided far too little information about the available data, how to extract the required information from the surrounding code. There was absolutely no metadata, no type signatures. Everything was ... just a value of some unspecified type. After hours of combing through the code, we stepped through it with the debugger and finally got the information we needed. After that, 15 minutes and done.

Computer scientists have pursued natural language-like development environments for a lifetime. "Forget the switches and blinkenlights. Our new assembler will let everyone write programs." "FORTRAN looks just like algebra. Poof, every mathematician, scientist, and engineer can write programs." "COBOL will turn every clerk into a programmer, and so will Structured Query Language."

If only. It doesn't work like that. Python is a fabulously powerful tool, but the underlying complexities of software remain. I doubt we'll ever overcome them.

Python has won?😂 What has python won?

Rust is better

If you make money from your services, then you are a professional, no matter which language or tools you use. Stop hating on the self taught community, they have contributed to the advancement of the science as well.

Python hasn’t won because it’s not fighting the same battles as other languages. No-one is going to write a device driver or operating system in Python. No-one is going to write a large enterprise system or database in Python.

I don't understand any of this.

I am not anprofessional coder but I enjoyed Object Pascal in Borland Delphi 30 years ago. Just getting back into programming as a hobby and Python is perfect and Pyside6 is my favorite library for gui stuff in Python. I may start a small business to help companies improve production work flow in factories and Python is perfect for this.

An excellent video about an excellent programming language

won what?

Too directionless. Captive content should have few attracting key points

if theres is a pycon.. is there a c++con?

The music is too loud...

I will never understand why Python doesn't allow an option to generate a compiled executable for the native processor it runs on.

Python haters are clutching their Perls.

Not everything needs to be optimized to the nth degree, some jobs just need a simple tool that can be maintained without lots of technical debt.

I've built Bayesian forecasters with multiprocessing and threading in Python. It gets the job done, I don't need it to be faster, it's fast enough and I can hand it off easier this way.

Man so elitists 😅 python is just a language. If it can do the job and can meet the requirements then it doesn't matter which tech stack you use. Using c++ doesn't make u better than someone using python

Uh it’s still too slow. 😂 Apples and oranges. Python is good for data leaving C++ and Rust for performance

The only benefits of Python are the easy syntax and user friendly libraries, but practically, all important code in the world is written in C/C++ because of it's reliability which Python inherently lacks. Python is nice for computer science but will never leave the computer and control anything in the real world.
Python works well for small projects but as soon as something gets a little to big, Python is worthless.

Also Python itself is written in C so it is basically a slower version of C/C++ for people who are to lazy to learn C/C++.

Summary:
1. Python is slow
2. Python is unreliable
3. Python is for people who cant be fucked learning C/C++

Anybody who has ever had to write Python code knows Satan is behind it

2 years scripting/automating with Python. I've studied some C, C#, Rust, Java, Zig and Mojo. But it's hard to move away from Python because the libraries are too convenient. Some specific functionalities don't exist anywhere else and I've looked hard into it.

Maybe Mojo someday. I was sold on Mojo when its creator said "you can just use for loops", and Mojo is being designed to work with all Python libraries, but no native Windows support so far, and the language is so young that new versions break old code.

Until then we use Pandas, Numpy and comprehensions to avoid for loops .

Python is the most infamous case of the "worse is better"

I still enjoy Riby more, but really all I care about is getting my work done.

Great video! Can I ask how you make such good animations?

There were other competing scripting languages: Ruby, Javascript, Lua.

Was it because some other languages go like this:

Add a line do code here;
Then another one;
Ok... Now you can print "Hello, World";

Lost me at Floppy data.

There is nothing new in this video, there is not an untold story..