The main reason why Python is so big is because XKCD and the

>>61460656
Yeah, probably.

No python is popular because it's easy and easier to import a library to do something.

>>61460679
how is typing import math significantly harder than typing #include "math"?

>>61460679
Name a mainstream language newer than 1990 where this is hard.

>>61460656
python is popular because it enforces good coding style and is a fairly simple language to pick up, which makes it great for writing things quickly and in teams. also see: go

I have seen some fucking awful python though

>>61460656
You're right, OP
/thread

It doesn't enforce good coding style and it isn't a fairly simple language to pick up at this point.

>>61460656
python (2.7) is beautiful and easy to learn/write.

there's also libs to make the critical parts of your code very fast (like theano).

and it's pretty mature with a decently sized ecosystem!

>>61460786
The first point is very subjective. The other two (mature, strong library ecosystem) are the real strength of python at this point.

With that said, many of the machine learning and scientific libraries for Python are a very good example of it being shoehorned for something it wasn't intended for. It only just recently got a matrix multiplication operator, and it looks godawful (@).

>>61460656
Python is probably the best entry language from Scratch to C.

When people saw Python run entire infastructures, it became more than a pretty language.

>>61460720
sepples

>>61461896
That is exactly why I said newer than 1990. Having easier imports than a systems programming language from 1983 that was designed to be compatible with header files in a systems programming language from 1973 is not an achievement.

>>61461977
sepples17: electric boogaloo is newer than 1990
and barely has anything to do with C anymore aside from being backward compatible

Python is the american english of programming languages

it is popular because it is easy to write new stuff in, plenty of available libraries for most things, and pretty straightforward to learn/read.

>>61460656
spotted the idiot

python is hot garbage and slow as fuck

>>61460656
It's convenient to slap together scripts that perform reasonably well.

It also has some good libraries for data and ML shit, which is all the rage and the only real alternative you had there previously was R.

Most of the people I see using python do data and ML shit, go figure.

It is really just the new perl.
Perl used to be really popular because of CPAN, now python is the one with heaps of packages.

It isn't a perfect language, but it's "good enough". HN and the like can jerk off on how smart they are for using haskell, but for most people they just want to get shit done.

>>61464351
Well yeah, don't implement an x265 decoder in python. It's good for almost anything else though.

>>61460656
I don't think those are the main reasons. Mainly because I have never heard of the hacker manifesto or an XKCD about python.

>>61464351
>Using python for resource-intensive tasks

>>61460656
Defend this, Pytards:

$ time bash <<< ""

real    0m0.004s
user    0m0.000s
sys    0m0.000s

$ time python3 <<< ""

real    0m0.056s
user    0m0.048s
sys    0m0.004s

>56ms just for the interpreter to start
>you cannot make any Python code run under 50ms

>>61460703
>hurdur let me import a library TO FUCKING PRINT TO STDOUT

python vs C/C++ is like comparing legos to steel I-beams

>>61460656
Python is literally the WORST modern scripting language. Take for instance Perl 6, or even Lua, they are both much elegant and sound, designed by people how actually knew what they were doing. Guido van Rossum is probably one of the worst language designers in history, it's amazing how popular python is...

>>61460724
You're welcome

>>61464552
Don't need to defend, it's not really a problem?

>>61464609
I think you're referring to php and rasmus. Python is actually well designed.

>>61465374
>it's not really a problem?
While Python is starting up, other programs in superior languages have already finished.

>>61465388
OK then don't use Python for command line processing. For web/gui development 50ms start up is not noticeable. It's only a problem if it starts being as slow as java.

>>61462062
this

>>61460724
>python is popular because it enforces good coding style and is a fairly simple language to pick up, which makes it great for writing things quickly and in teams.

There are other languages that are easy to pick up and allow rapid development, such as Javascript.

Competent development teams already have their own coding standards.

Teamwork has nothing to do with the language chosen.

Only reason Python is popular is because it fits with the philosophy of Leftists.

>>61465409
>For web/gui
I should have known I was talking to a webdev faggot who's never produced a worthwhile line of code in his life.

>>61462062
No, Python is the short bus of programming languages.

>>61465786
The only faggots are those that use js.
That said I'm working on a desktop qt app atm. With python.

That is a well reasoned and moderate opinion.

>>61460724
>it enforces good coding style
wrong
whitespace syntax != good styling practices
just because everything is politely indented doesnt mean the codebase isnt an unreadable blob of one liner bullshit

t. somebody who has to deal with a fuckhead python codebase every goddamn day, and spends most of it having to decipher what this write-only crap was

>>61461648
>When people saw Python run entire infastructures
You mean like how all the major companies are now specifically shifting their infrastructures away from it, because they realized it has awful scaling and threading performance?

>>61465409
>It's slow but's it's not a problem.

Fucking Stockholm Syndrome.

>>61464552
jit lag dipshit.

>>61465998
That's like blaming your bycicle for not being able to reach supersonic speeds - that's not its purpose.

Python is used for glue code. It just so happens that nowadays most of the lower level, fast stuff is implemented already and all you need to do is glue it together. No one is claiming that python is the language to end all languages, just that it's good in many domains.

Following the first analogy, you would use the bycicle for the 1km trip from the airport to the high speed rail. It's fast enough, let's you navigate easily through narrow streets and you can get exercise while you're at it. No one is going to say it's a good idea to commute 100km by bike every day.

The same is not true of js with all these big companies trying to put out shitty, laggy online js versions of good and fast desktop apps.

GLOBAL

INTERPRETER

LOCK

shit language with more garbage statements tacked on every fucking minor release to the grammars.

The only real plus about python is that the standard lib is so fuck huge that it basically covers virtually every major OS API and a bunch of useful widgets and shit for basic shit.

>>61465409
We have plenty of CLI tooling built that uses python, and a bunch in go too.

>>61466138
The only people that complain about the GIL don't understand how it works and don't understand that it is not as big as a problem as they think it is.

>>61460656

Before you say anything else retarded:

> Compare Python to Perl.
Compare Python to Perl.
> Compare Python to Perl.
Compare Python to Perl.
> Compare Python to Perl.

That's what most people used before Python.

>>61464555
You are confused because the language's default input/output library is in a standard library? Programming is not for you.

File: 1500488218525.jpg (54KB, 550x550px) Image search: [Google]

54KB, 550x550px

>>61465929
This desu.
I once saw a C one liner that when properly laid out was over 300 lines

>>61464552
0.05s is not even enough time to type a character. What exactly would I gain from a 0.05s program running in 0.004s?

>>61465374
>Python is actually well designed.
Global Interpreter Lock
Quod Erat Demonstrandum

>>61466361
This.

There's a reason the hype is switching away from django and flask. Python wasn't made to host large, complex applications.

It was created as a scripting language. That's why the scientific community loves it. It's easy to prototype something, run analyses.

It's miles better than perl and the majority of perl users have switched for a reason.

>>61467687
can you name a scripting language with thread support and no GIL

>>61467743
perl6

Python is popular because it's actually FUN to use. I can look at messy python and figure it out easily. I can open a supposedly well written C++ piece of shit and it'll make less sense than mom's spaghetti.