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Comment by jstx1 | Hacker News Reader

> its not at all clear which will be the leading platform going forward (Python, R, Julia or something else altogether). This ambivalence might sound absurd on the face of the exponential recent growth of Python

It sounds absurd because trends don't reverse overnight. You can be fairly confident that Python will be the top language in this space for a while and that R will never be the top choice for most applications.

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Irrespective of whether Julia ends up the winner of the shift or if the shift happens, it is quite possible for trends to reverse very fast. See Perl or Objective-C for that matter.

https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/perl/

https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/objective-C/

In 2006 (for Perl) and 2014 (for Objective-C) it was clear they had the momentum for their particular space however their limitations were well known and as soon as a better language came along the momentum flipped in an equally dramatic manner. Python is much more widespread so it will remain strong in some areas but you could see the flip in ML/DS given challenges productionizing across broad capabilities (not just doing NN's).

As the joke goes -- python is the second best language for everything, if you know only two languages. With ML expanding beyond narrow big tech domains there will be need for specialized languages like Julia (and others perhaps like Mojo etc..)

Objective C was replaced single-handedly by Apple, it wasn't a natural trend reversal.

It was also boosted by Apple in the first place! so nothing natural about these kind of trends. If Google and FB hadn't picked up Python for ML it wouldn't have taken off as much, which is also to say if they (or another large player) back another language you could see a similar decline in Python usage.

Google tried Swift for ML and it didn't make any dent in Python.

I think so too in the short term (1-2 years at least) Python will gently move into the last stage of its adoption curve (even doing nothing).

But now is a time where at various high places people will say: "Ok you got my attention. What is this snake language you are talking about and explain why I should bet the house on it".

And the answer is not simple.

What's your argument - that people who don't understand the space at all will dictate rewrites in other languages? It seems very unlikely.

you obviously have never worked in the corporate world

The corporate world will want to do $x because $x is in the news, they won't be making nuanced arguments about tradeoffs in a domain they don't understand. Least of all arguments that go entirely against the trends in the industry.

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