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Comment by noon-raccoon | Hacker News Reader

Python has wonderful set of libraries so it is probably going to stay with us for a while. However, I suspect major takeover by Typescript (despite I like Python more).

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My money would be on Go and Rust. Most of the major downsides of either language go away if you let the agent write almost all of the code

Go might have the advantage because it's easier to read outside the IDE

I can see Rust (and to some degree, Go) as the modern outputs from AI. My point about Python being Pinyin is that both of these languages have a relatively steep learning curve for someone without programming experience, and that it might be worth learning Python before doing agentic coding in Rust, much as children in China learn Latin characters before they learn characters.

The problem with Rust is that, AI aside, the learning curve is steep. Even senior engineers need to wrap their head around Rust for several weeks. You can pick up Go or Java in an afternoon. It’s fast, it mostly makes sense. Unless you do very specific low level things I don’t particularly see Rust becoming the de facto norm for the vast amount of enterprise code

A big selling point for Python is the large number of native extensions.

Rust has a huge advantage here, in fact many popular Python libraries use Rust underneath.

Maybe the/a big "selling point" for python is the fact, that many teachers don't know better.

Does this also apply to the industry professionals who pushed it to number 1/2?

> Most of the major downsides of either language go away if you let the agent write almost all of the code

But then you have the major downside of 'writing' poor code.

It's an interesting point but I fear Go's FFI is going to kneecap its ability to be widely adopted unless that story improves significantly. It's a lovely language if your interop with other languages is minimal.

I 100% agree about Go. It is definitely going to claim its share, even without AI being particularly good at it, because of its speed, native concurrency, and strong typing. It is much less flexible than Python and clearly loses in some areas — for example, Python’s ML and parsing libraries are far superior. However, for API-focused projects, like a typical Flask or FastAPI app, Go seems more powerful.

Not to forget "The Beam" - especially gleam!

I’m a JS/TS dev (and fan) I don’t think either is a replacement for Python. They are not standalone languages but require some runtime to interact with the world (DOM or Node.js etc) which have limited capabilities for interacting with the system - their focus is network services. It’s not that inaccurate to say that JS is just API for a C++ app. :)

Now if .NET was still not so embedded in the Windows ecosystem that would be very interesting to me to jump from TS. As it is I am learning Go instead.

This is a non-sequitur? Python is also not a "standalone language" and requires "some runtime".

Sure but that runtime is much more general purpose - JS runtimes are focused on network apps. For example you can write an app like Calibre in Python and QT and it is much lighter than writing something with JS and Electron.

Python is easier to interface with C/C++ libs.

The async loop does not automatically make it "focused on network apps". Most apps I work with in Python also run on an async runtime.

It’s not the async loop - it’s interfacing with the system. JS is designed to run in a sandbox and the only way out in say Node.js is to write C++ addons.

For example you don’t get to see TCP headers with Node out of the box and you can’t craft packets, whereas you can in Python.

Yeah, I've thought about this since I do prefer JS as a language... Always thought the main advantage of Python was interaction with C libs. Which is also why CPython was the only serious option for an interpreter, even though things like PyPy were faster.

.NET has had Linux support since 2016 or so. The only major part of .NET that is still stuck in Windows is official UI frameworks from MS, though there are third party frameworks like Avalonia that support Linux.

I am well aware it supports Linux but the vast majority of work still involves being in Windows-only shops which is a circle of hell I am keen to tread only when I absolutely have to. :)

> require some runtime to interact with the world

This was why I was excited by Bun until recent events. A typescript runtime with a rich standard library, and fast. It looked like it would be a great sweet spot for many use cases.

I feel like the moment for typescript taking over has come and gone. It also became way more complicated than necessary and that limits its appeal compared to python (not to say python doesn’t have problems of its own)

Interesting -- I still think that Python is an easier onramp than TypeScript for new developers. But given the popularity and depth of JavaScript, and the clear advantages (and popularity) of TypeScript in serious development, that's not a bad prediction.

One thing that Python has that virtually no (well okay groovy and nim do too) other programming language has is whitespace for blocks rather than visible braces (or even BEGIN/END ala Wirthian languages). That's something much like line numbers in classic BASIC that introduces a roadblock when learners move on from it.

I don't know if it's that hard for people to go from Python (where whitespace is significant) to languages that use {} and the like. But hey, people only hire me when they want people to learn Python, not when they're moving away from it. :-)

js is a web scripting language that can be strong-armed into running scripts through a runtime.

Python is a general development language that can be used to build servers and web pages, but does a lot more besides.

They're not really comparable.

Having said that - I wouldn't be surprised if Python drifts towards stronger typing, although it will probably remain optional.

Nowadays a lot of web servers are written in js, for better or worse

To what extent do you see Python drifting toward stronger typing? I ask because after 10 years without touching a single line of Python, I recently worked on a Python code base and I was very positively surprised by the static typing that's available in the language now. Not even necessary to to reach for additional tooling like JS and TS.

How are you getting static typing without additional tooling?

I mean, of course there is tooling involved. But it's part of the language. Unlike TypeScript which is a superset of JS and requires transpilation.

What tooling are you thinking of that’s part of the language? I don’t think CPython ships with a type checker, does it? People typically use mypy or pyright and neither or these are part of the language.

Drifting? I think it's there. basedpyright is awesome and super fast. Our latest services are all CI gated by type checking. Early in my career you'd hit so many dumb errors running your code - NoneType, attribute, value, and type errors. I'd say that's been cut over 95%.

Both of these started as scripting languages

Frankly, I prefer Python because I find it more elegant. However, in my industry bubble, I see a clear drift toward TypeScript.

Interesting. Can you please elaborate more? Is it due to the combination of popular foundation (js) and the addition of strong typing? The runtime environment differences? The ease of integration with other languages / tools?

Don't underestimate the significance of code being runnable in a browser environment.

A few points that come to mind:

* Most applications run on the web nowadays. With TypeScript, you can write both the front end and the back end. * TypeScript shares many syntactic-sugar ideas with Python, but it is also statically typed. Whether that is good or bad is a hot topic, but it gives you a lot of confidence through compile-time checks. * Running Node for system tasks is as easy as running the Python interpreter. However, Python is still slightly ahead there.

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