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?
No.
Can you just stop?
I will now end the discussion with the word Hitler.
And my teacher was wrong. There actually are stupid questions.
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
There are no stupid questions, only stupid people.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
To.... rule them all?
It fills the "smug hipster twat who can't grok lisp" niche perfectly.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'm a Whitespace developer, you insensitive clod!
I find it disturbing that people would want Python to beat Perl.
Women have enough problems with domestic violence. We shouldn't be supporting hitting a woman with a snake.
640K programming languages ought to be enough for anybody.
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
Languages like Lisp or Forth can sustain themselves because of their "all-level" nature. COBOL is is the obvious opposite.
When you mention Lisp, Forth and COBOL instead of Ruby, NodeJS, Haskell, etc. it's probably time to retire.
We'll make great pets
NodeJS is a language? Well, if people say things like these now, maybe I really should retire for my own sanity.
Ezekiel 23:20
So....denotational or operational semantics? :D
Ezekiel 23:20
Surely you mean LISP, not Lisp.
Yeth,
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I worked with a couple of different varieties of Business Basic between 1986 and 1993. Hewlett-Packard's version was particularly easy to work with.
Basic's two primary advantages in the business office were that
1. it was the first and best developed interpreted language. If your business was successful enough to have a couple of dedicated IT employees, it could afford a minicomputer and could make good use of compiled languages. But compiled languages suck on the PCs that were affordable to small businesses of that time period. The RAM was too tiny and limiting, hard drives were too small and slow for an efficient compiler environment. Some form of Basic was your only way forward.
2. With a good business Basic you could get the point of sales pizzabox PCs generating data for the back office accounting PC while your competitor down the street was still working on how to build a string variable in Pascal. You didn't worry about the other competitors who were trying to use C. Their development cycles were constantly broken as bigger businesses hired away their C programming staff.
Those were the wild and wooly days of cheapernet, LANtastic, and sneakernet, when we were all still buying huge 40 megabyte hard drives that had to be partitioned since DOS was limited to 32 MB. Back when "Windows was a 16-bit GUI running on an 8-bit operating system, written for a 4-bit processor, by a 2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition".
Umm, some things haven't changed that much I guess. I just came across this definition of Windows 10:
Windows 10 (n): A 64-bit "upgrade" to a 32-bit patch for a 16-bit GUI shell running on an 8-bit operating system, written for a 4-bit processor by a 2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition!
I of course use Linux. It's true that during the first decade of switching from Windows to Ubuntu I had a few miserable moments, but now it's all smooth sailing.