Comment by gnur | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gnur | Hacker News Reader

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I often dabble in other languages but in the end always return to python (3).

What it offers for me truly is the batteries included and easy, memorable and predictable syntax. (Probably due to experience).

Sure, Go is easier to deploy, Erlang and by extension Elixir are easier to scale.

But python does align very well with my personal though process. I don't think parallel and I don't have race conditions in my mind. If I want to quickly write something that will perform decently, I choose python, because the time I save by not having to learn a new language could be days or perhaps even weeks. I guess it boils down to this: with my current experience, I'm more then 10 times as productive in python as I would be in any other language.

Sure, it would be neat if I had as much experience in Erlang as I have in python, but that will take years, and at the end of the day, I'd rather finish my project this year with python, then next year with any other language.

Concur with the 'thought process.' I'm a happier person after a day of writing Python than I am after a day of writing Go. Environments take a long time to mature.

Python finally has module packaging down fairly well (Go still drives me crazy even with the latest vending approach--cannot wait for a major build to break because the module creator switched hosting services).

Python is pretty pleasant to debug. The ability to set breakpoints and then poke around and/or modify values saves me hundreds of hours a year.

Building executables can still be a bit problematic (one reason we used Go for a few projects -- they really have this down). However, latest pyInstaller has been working smoothly on Windows and Linux.

Python is quick enough -- and we know how to scale websites with WSGI and stand-alone apps with asyncio (or Twisted). Rarely does the need for that last ounce of speed outweigh the ability to quickly create and modify apps.

Elixir, of all the new languages, intrigues me the most; not just for the language but being built on top of Erlang's OTP platform. They also seem to be doing a decent job on the packaging and distribution front.

> But python does align very well with my personal though process.

TBH, that's the most rational reason ever for choosing any language. Anything else is much less important.

But, yes, for me the experience is the opposite, Python flies in the face of my thought process in every single aspect of it. I find it limiting, inflexible and dominating. Which means, everyone think differently, and there is no single language that suits all possible combinations of problem domains and thinking styles.

>Sure, Go is easier to deploy

Go's lack of a package manager making deployment more painful is the thing that made me come back to python.

Go is staticly linked, you don't need to deploy packages, just the binary.

But you have to build those with its dependencies. And the best thing Go came up with is vendorizing.

And good luck keeping everything updated.

(Does go statically link the libc, too? If so, you should be rebuilding all your go applications right now, after the glibc issues reported on Tuesday…)

You can link a Go program completely statically, but it's not the default.

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