Hacker News Reader

Comment by tincholio | Hacker News Reader

Amen, brother. I'm not proficient in Python, but from my (admittedly, limited) experience with it, it feels like programming with a straightjacket on.

View on HN

It is, and that's the point. The Python community coined TOOWTDI (there's only one way to do it) in response to Perl's "There's more than one way to do it". What that way is seems to be "what even the most clueless programmer could reasonably understand". This to the point where even the adoption of a concept as common as assignment expressions was met with a community shitstorm.

It seems like a language designed for people who really have no interest in craft of programming, and just use it as a means to an end (note I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this, but if your career is in programming, and you keep that attitude, I'd suggest you find another one or move to management, you're not gonna be happy).

To be honest, I feel like Python's philosophy makes it easier to focus on the "craft" of programming; instead of worrying about small details like how to iterate through a collection, I'm able to just do it the boring-but-effective Pythonic way and move on to higher-level details of the program. So I guess I'm not strictly disagreeing with you, but I think the craft of programming is about far more than just how your code looks, and I find Python to be excellent for pursuing those other areas of craftsmanship.

I suppose so, but the higher level details of a program will often follow from the nature of the language you are coding it in. I know a lot of my code would be "architected" differently if the language I was working in had a general disdain for passing anonymous functions around, and I don't think it would end up as effective.

And finding new more effective ways to do common things, new tricks so to speak, is important in keeping the mind engaged.

The tools might not be as important as the end product, but for the person who is always using those tools, being able to improve and customize them to their liking is extremely important.

I guess the difference is a programming language is less a tool than an end product in itself, that needs to be able to be understood and modified by other people. As opposed to say, a plumbers preferred toolset, of which no trace will be left when the next person comes to do the job.

> It seems like a language designed for people who really have no interest in craft of programming, and just use it as a means to an end

It's kind of funny how much that echos the past criticisms of Java - a language lacking in all kinds of features that frustrate advanced programmers. Yet Python's popularity was in many ways a reaction against Java - perhaps for other reasons.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com