Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Will Python Become The Dominant Programming Language?
An anonymous reader shares their thoughts on language popuarity:
In the PYPL index, which is based on Google searches and is supposed to be forward looking, the trend is unmistakable. Python is rising fast and Java and others are declining. Combine this with the fact that Python is now the most widely taught language in the universities. In fields such as data science and machine learning, Python is already dominating. "Python where you can, C++ where you must" enterprises are following suit too, especially in data science but for everything else from web development to general purpose computing...
People who complain that you can't build large scale systems without a compiler likely over-rely on the latter and are slaves to IDEs. If you write good unit tests and enforce Test Driven Development, the compiler becomes un-necessary and gets in the way. You are forced to provide too much information to it (also known as boilerplate) and can't quickly refactor code, which is necessary for quick iterations.
The original submission ends with a question: "Is Python going to dominate in the future?" Slashdot readers should have some interesting opinions on this. So leave your own thoughts in the comments. Will Python become the dominant programming language?
People who complain that you can't build large scale systems without a compiler likely over-rely on the latter and are slaves to IDEs. If you write good unit tests and enforce Test Driven Development, the compiler becomes un-necessary and gets in the way. You are forced to provide too much information to it (also known as boilerplate) and can't quickly refactor code, which is necessary for quick iterations.
The original submission ends with a question: "Is Python going to dominate in the future?" Slashdot readers should have some interesting opinions on this. So leave your own thoughts in the comments. Will Python become the dominant programming language?
Big Python fan myself. It's my favorite PL. (Public Service Anouncement: Old-fart space-indenting whitespace-whiners please go f*ck yourselves and please quit pestering us with your petty issues. Seriously now, grow the f*ck up.)
Point in case for getting into Python:
Python is the only language that is used professionally in *all* industries. Science, Media, Entertainment, Games, Heavy Industry, Military, Services, etc. No other PL has such a broad adoption. Java is business (on the server-side, initially unintended), C/C++ is games, science and industry, PHP is server-side web. Python is trivially easy to learn without being so batshit crazy like PHP. At the same time it scales very well into serious projects and long-term maintainability is better than just about anything else out there.
In popularity however, there is one exception going orthogonal to Python though and that PL is, of course, JavaScript. Yes, JS is/was a web frontend PL first and foremost, but browsers run everywhere and with Node JS returned to the server (it started out server-side on Netscape Server, which no one remembers aparently) and today, to many peoples surprise, JavaScript has just about won the PL wars. Sure some snobs are bickering about this, but those usually just haven't come to terms with this cold hard fact yet.
So, in a nutshell, no, Python isn't winning the PL wars, JS most likely did that already. But I say don't hesitate to stay with and dive deeper into Python, Python is here to stay and that's a good thing, because it is a very good, modern PL. Unlike JS btw. which does have the one or other awkward/annoying thing vis-a-vis Python imho. But then again, it runs in the Browser, which is why I do more JS than Python these days. It's a bit of a shame if you think about it, I would like to do more Python.
My 2 eurocents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca