I was so into Python for 10 years, was enjoyable to work in. But have deleted 100k+ lines this year already moving them to faster languages in a post AI codebot world. Mostly moving to go these days.
I can see one way forward being to prototype them in python and convert.
We started in Python because of “the ecosystem”. It was a mistake. The amount of time we spend ripping out each dependency and pruning it to what we need is way higher than if we’d spent the month building out what we need. I miss compilers and LLMs will NOT generate config driven code or things that serde well. Everything has layers and layers of adapters by default and the domain model slowly erodes over time.
I've been using Claude Opus and it's pretty competent. I rarely have to make steering corrections. Once I had to deal with confusion, but, overall, the code is neat and the approaches sensible. It all depends on how much context you give it to work from, for instance. If it's building on top of a well organized codebase with a good best-practices document, it performs just fine.
Just let me build a CRUD app, on the server, that spits out HTML without an excessive swamp of unmaintained nonsense and a cultish abhorrence of simplicity.
I personally chose C# for this reason, because ASP.NET is mature and (IMO) well designed. But there's also Java/Spring and and lots of other options in different languages depending on your preferences.
Not to mention that the demographic using Go - a simplistic-by-design, relatively slow GC'd language - is the last group I'd expect to get elitist about ORMs and demand every pound of performance from rawdogging SQL. That's a valid stance, but then why are you writing Go??! The common thread appears to be picking the most masochistic solution possible.
I can usually see the value of different languages for different use cases, but Go flummoxes me.
Had the rewrites not taken place, or Rust already being 1.0 by then, most likely would have had as many commercial success as Oberon and Limbo managed to.
You see this happening nowadays newer CNCF projects tend to be done in Rust, and there are even some that even go the C++ way, e.g. Envoy.
Judging by the community around Go, I also wonder if there's not an element of baby JS devs upskilling to Go, without yet having picked up a wider perspective. The performative aversion to DX could be explained if one sees Go as the opposite swing of the pendulum to JS and its excessive reliance on libraries, sugar, etc.
Try and write a signal processing thing with filters, windowing, overlap, etc. - there's no easy way to do it at all with the libraries that exist.
1. The very first steps are quite simple. Hello world is literally just `print("hello world")`. In other languages it can be a lot more complex.
2. It got a reputation as a beginner-friendly language as a result.
3. It has a "REPL" which means you can type code into a prompt and it will execute it interactively. This is very helpful for research (think AI) where you're trying stuff out and want to plot graphs and so on.
IMO it is undeservedly popular, or at least was. Wind back 10 years to when it was rapidly gaining mindshare:
1. While "hello world" is simple, if you went further to more complex programs you would hit two roadblocks: a) the lack of static type checking means large programs are difficult to maintain, and b) it's really really slow.
2. While the language is reasonable, the tooling (how you install packages, manage the code and so on) was eye-bleedingly abysmal.
3. While the REPL did technically exist, it was really bare bones. It couldn't even handle things like pasting code into it if the code contained blank lines (which it usually does).
However since it has become arguably the most popular language in the world, a lot of people have been forced to use it and so it is actually getting quite decent now. It has decent static types (even if lots of people still don't use them), the REPL is actually decent now (this changed very recently), and there's a new third party tool called `uv` to manage your code that is actually good.
The biggest issue with it now is that it's still horrifically slow (around 50-200x slower than "fast" languages like C++, Rust etc). It is pretty unlikely that that will ever change. People always try to excuse this by saying Python is a "glue" language and you just use it to connect components written in faster languages, but a) that's pure "you're holding it wrong", and b) that only works in some cases where there are nicely separated "slow bits" that can be moved to another language. That's the case for AI for example, where it's all numerical, but for lots of things it isn't. Mercurial was a competitor to Git that was written in Python and lost partly because it was way too slow. They've started writing parts in Rust but it took them 10 years to even start doing that and by then it was far too late.
> what would you suggest?
It really depends on what you want to make. I would pick something to make first and then pick the language based on that. Something like:
* AI: Python for sure. Make sure you use uv and Pyright.
* Web-based games: Typescript
* Web sites: Typescript, or maybe Go.
* Desktop GUI: Tbh I'd still use C++ with QtWidgets. Getting a bit old-school now tbf.
Also Rust is the best language of them all, but I dunno if I'd pick it as a beginner unless you really know you want to get into programming.
Yes it strains at the big to huge project end, not recommended to take it there. Still there are better tools to help now.
Choosing a language is a game of trade-offs: potentially slower execution in return for faster development time, for example. If your team is already familiar with Ruby, will asking them to write a project in Rust necessarily result in a better product? Maybe, but it will almost certainly take much longer.
Anyway, how many Python programs are actually "too slow"? Most of the time, Python is fast enough, even if heavy computation is offloaded to other languages.
As for Rust being the best language of them all, that's, like, your opinion, man.
That being said, I'm starting all new large development work in Rust. Python is hard to reason about due to its dynamic nature in large codebases. And if I'm enabling strict typing everywhere, I might as well use a typed language and get a performance boost. Obviously, this is only because I'm the sole developer and using AI to improve productivity.
Work settings are completely different and one has to be a team player to find the language that works for everyone.
Another classic lie about Python. The slower speed doesn't matter because it's development speed that's important, and Python gives you faster development speed!
Except... it absolutely doesn't. It would be very difficult to argue that Typescript has significantly slower development speed but it is much faster to execute. I also disagree that Python is any faster than Go, Rust or Lotion, but I think lots of people blindly accept that it is and would argue based on that.
At risk of nebulous repetition: There are many reasons one might choose a particular language. If you or your team find TypeScript or Go more amenable, by all means, use them.
The gotchas that I see with Python are that some really garbage code can work - that's more difficult in a language like Rust. The other nice thing about Python (aside from the fact that it can be very readable) is that devs rarely use threads and threads cause all sorts of race conditions - often when the performance of threading was never needed in the first place and the usage of them just added pointless complexity.
lol, no. Just no. Python is far superior for website backends unless perhaps you're running one of the top 20 websites in the world.
You can generate the HTML server-side using TSX. 100x better than anything Python offers.
That looks like HTML, but it's TypeScript. It gets compiled to actual HTML. Can any Python framework do that??
In Python, you'd typically write your logic in Python and your HTML in a separate Jinja2 template file — two languages, two files, context-switching. With Fresh + TSX, your logic and your markup live together in one .tsx file, both in TypeScript, with full type-checking throughout.
> That looks like HTML, but it's TypeScript. It gets compiled to actual HTML. Can any Python framework do that??
IMHO that's a terrible idea that no one should ever actually use, but if you are really in love with that, you can have it:
Not true, you can compile it to HTML on the backend or even statically too.
It's not a terrible idea; it's actually amazing. One of Typescript's best features. I do agree at first it seems icky (reminds me of Qt's MOC) but in practice it's fantastic. I recommend you try it before criticising. Python has nothing close (nor do any other languages tbf).
You got it wrong, the terrible idea is `pyxy-org/pyxy`
>> invalid TypeScript.
> If you don't happen to have react, preact or a similar front end library, and a appropriate bundler, it is invalid TypeScript.
> Not true, you can compile it to HTML on the backend or even statically too.
I had to test your assertion that it compiles to HTML. I remember it being very invalid typescript without react scafolding. So I tested it without the react scafolding:
# mise use node@24
# echo '{}' >package.json
# npm i --save typescript
# echo 'function Greeting({ name }: { name: string }) { return ( <div class="card"> <h1>Hello, {name}!</h1> <p>Welcome to my site.</p> </div> ); }
' >hello.tsx
# : a test to check if we have a working typescript compiler
# tsc hello.tsx
error TS5112: tsconfig.json is present but will not be loaded if files are specified on commandline. Use '--ignoreConfig' to skip this error.
# echo '{"compilerOptions":{"jsx":"react"}}' >tsconfig.json
# tsc
hello.tsx:1:58 - error TS7026: JSX element implicitly has type 'any' because no interface 'JSX.IntrinsicElements' exists.
1 function Greeting({ name }: { name: string }) { return ( <div class="card"> <h1>Hello, {name}!</h1> <p>Welcome to my site.</p> </div> ); }
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
hello.tsx:1:59 - error TS2874: This JSX tag requires 'React' to be in scope, but it could not be found.
1 function Greeting({ name }: { name: string }) { return ( <div class="card"> <h1>Hello, {name}!</h1> <p>Welcome to my site.</p> </div> ); }
~~~
hello.tsx:1:77 - error TS7026: JSX element implicitly has type 'any' because no interface 'JSX.IntrinsicElements' exists.
1 function Greeting({ name }: { name: string }) { return ( <div class="card"> <h1>Hello, {name}!</h1> <p>Welcome to my site.</p> </div> ); }
~~~~
hello.tsx:1:78 - error TS2874: This JSX tag requires 'React' to be in scope, but it could not be found.
1 function Greeting({ name }: { name: string }) { return ( <div class="card"> <h1>Hello, {name}!</h1> <p>Welcome to my site.</p> </div> ); }
~~
hello.tsx:1:95 - error TS7026: JSX element implicitly has type 'any' because no interface 'JSX.IntrinsicElements' exists.
1 function Greeting({ name }: { name: string }) { return ( <div class="card"> <h1>Hello, {name}!</h1> <p>Welcome to my site.</p> </div> ); }
~~~~~
hello.tsx:1:101 - error TS7026: JSX element implicitly has type 'any' because no interface 'JSX.IntrinsicElements' exists.
1 function Greeting({ name }: { name: string }) { return ( <div class="card"> <h1>Hello, {name}!</h1> <p>Welcome to my site.</p> </div> ); }
~~~
hello.tsx:1:102 - error TS2874: This JSX tag requires 'React' to be in scope, but it could not be found.
1 function Greeting({ name }: { name: string }) { return ( <div class="card"> <h1>Hello, {name}!</h1> <p>Welcome to my site.</p> </div> ); }
~
hello.tsx:1:123 - error TS7026: JSX element implicitly has type 'any' because no interface 'JSX.IntrinsicElements' exists.
1 function Greeting({ name }: { name: string }) { return ( <div class="card"> <h1>Hello, {name}!</h1> <p>Welcome to my site.</p> </div> ); }
~~~~
hello.tsx:1:128 - error TS7026: JSX element implicitly has type 'any' because no interface 'JSX.IntrinsicElements' exists.
1 function Greeting({ name }: { name: string }) { return ( <div class="card"> <h1>Hello, {name}!</h1> <p>Welcome to my site.</p> </div> ); }
~~~~~~
Found 9 errors in the same file, starting at: hello.tsx:1
# cat hello.js
function Greeting({ name }) { return (React.createElement("div", { class: "card" }, " ", React.createElement("h1", null, "Hello, ", name, "!"), " ", React.createElement("p", null, "Welcome to my site."), " ")); }
# : sanity check
# mise use deno
# deno hello.tsx
# : no output
# echo 'function Greeting({ name }: { name: string }) { return ( <div class="card"> <h1>Hello, {name}!</h1> <p>Welcome to my site.</p> </div> ); }; Greeting({ name: "world!" });' >hello2.tsx
# deno hello2.tsx
error: Uncaught (in promise) ReferenceError: React is not defined
at Greeting (file:////hellotsx/hello.tsx:1:49)
at file:////hellotsx/hello.tsx:1:141
Yes, separating html out in jinja2 or whatever is far superior.
1. You can compose HTML using normal code - functions, loops, etc. No separate shitty template language or whatever.
2. You get full support for static typing and IDE code intelligence. That's huge and pretty much unique to TSX.
Once your program starts to get bigger you have abstractions that can cope fairly well and keep your code simple to use - this is what Perl didn't have.
If you need more speed then you can write extensions in some compiled language.I think TCL was better at this hybrid approach but Python is a nicer language in itself.
You can also just dump python and write everything in that other language but now you understand the problem space quite well and you won't be trying to learn about it using a language where change is "difficult."
All of our services we were our are significantly faster and more reliable. We used Rust, it wasn’t hard to do
The versioning issue I've seen across libraries that version change in many languages.
I don't tend to hit Python 2 issues using LLMs with it, but I do hit library things (e.g. Pydantic likes to make changes between libraries - or loads of the libraries used a lot by AI companies).
I also don’t have issues with quality of Python generated. It takes a bit of nudging to use list comps and generators rather than imperative forms but it tends to mimic code already in context. So if the codebase is ok, it does do better.
Indentation is a horrible decision (there’s a reason no other language went this way), which led to simple concepts like blocks/lambdas having pretty wild constraints (only one line??)
Type decoration has been a welcome addition, but too slowly iterated on and the native implementations (mypy) are horribly slow at any meaningful size.
Concurrency was never good and its GIL+FFI story has boxed it into a long-term pit of sadness.
I’ve used it for years, but I’m happy to see it go. It didn’t win because it was the best language.
But complaining about indentation is silly. Other languages' compilers don't require it like python does, but the humans using those languages all absolutely require proper indentation. Why not make it part of the language?
Except of course for those that did, Haskell, Fortran for example.
It’s pretty ok in Python, but meaningful indentation is amazing with a proper type system and compiler. Clean, consistent, efficient, and ensures working code is easily read and standardized.
I’m unaware of anyone accepting improperly formatted C# as ‘done’, and would reject any such PR out of hand because of the potential for legibility issues to hide bugs. So: if it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done by the compiler to save line noise.
"I don't think it makes much sense to try to add "functional" primitives to Python, because the reason those primitives work well in functional languages don't apply to Python, and they make the code pretty unreadable for people who aren't used to functional languages (which means most programmers). I also don't think that the current crop of functional languages is ready for mainstream." https://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/08/25/2115204/inter...
Ruby has `do … end` blocks that are readable and greatly improve the language, without turning it into a "functional" language.
I will never understand why people are upset about this.
You HAVE multi-line lambdas. They're called functions.
Yeah, I know you want a function that's only used once to be able to be defined in-line, but tbh I've always found that syntax to be pretty ugly, especially once you're passing two functions to a single call, or have additional parameters AFTER the function (I'm looking at you, setTimeout/setInterval).
If you mean "easy to get something out of it" then yeah, it's great.
I personally now use a mixture of Typescript and Rust for most things, including AI coding. Its been working quite well. (AI doesn't handle Rust as well as TS, in that the code isn't quite idiomatic, but it does ok)
I’ve tinkered a little in Gleam and Elixir too. Elixir was incredibly enjoyable, and Gleam is a wonderful language that I wish I could work with more, but I don’t really have a use case for it and nobody will pay me to write it…
Back in 2009, I also spent a few months playing with Factor (before switching to Clojure because despite Clojure being niche, Factor was even more so). It was an interesting and somewhat mind bending experience.
The problem with Rust is that you have to rethink your memory management architecture. I think Go is an easier choice.
AI can't compete against the classical AI where both Prolog and Lisp have tons of experience on contraint logic programming and expert systems. With AI you can throw up tons of RAM and VRAM (> $12000) and yet proper designs with Prolog with outperform these by a huge gap.
- You wrote 100K lines of code (I've worked on several large C++ projects that were far smaller)
- You wrote those lines in Python (surely the whole point of Python is to write less code)
- You deleted them (never delete anything, isn't this what modern VCS is all about?)
But whatever floats your boat.
The person said: "deleted 100k+ lines this year already moving them to faster languages"
Are you saying that when you move code to another language/rewrite in another language, you leave the original languages code in your repo?
They didn't say they deleted it from their git history. I delete code all the time (doesn't mean its "gone", just that its not in my git head).
Deleting "from my codebase" doesn't imply deleting it from history or backups. Just that the code isn't present for future edits or deployments.
The way you're talking, it sounds like you never delete code from your codebase. Do you just comment it out when you change a line to something else or replace a function with a new one? Just add new files?
I would need some evidence of that.
Our entire business runs on 300k lines of Ruby (on Rails) and I can keep most of the business logic in my head. I would say our codebase is not exactly “tiny” and just cracking the ceiling into “smal” territory. And comparatively, people probably write even less code in equivalent rails apps to django ones. 100k lines of C++ is miniscule.
Obviously “deleting code” in this context doesn’t mean purging version control history but the current state of the codebase.
No, no, it is not, or at least not in my experience (I do not and never have done web development - medium performance C++ code - I don't see how I could write, understand and support 100K lines of code in this area).
And so, what does your Ruby code actually do?
Our experiences differ then. Mine is that almost all of the code I write is directly targeted on the usually quite complex problem I am trying to solve. I don't do boilerplate, for example.