this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2024
8 points (62.5% liked)

Unpopular Opinion

6419 readers
59 users here now

Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!


How voting works:

Vote the opposite of the norm.


If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.



Guidelines:

Tag your post, if possible (not required)


  • If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
  • If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].


Rules:

1. NO POLITICS


Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.


2. Be civil.


Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...


Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.


5. No trolling.


This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.



Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
8
Python is overrated and overused. (self.unpopularopinion)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by scharf_2x40 to c/unpopularopinion
 

Python is the most popular programming language and beloved by many. However I can't understand why (this is still the case in 2024).

Here are my main gripes with it:

  • It is slow, performance intensive tasks have to be offloaded to other languages, which makes it complicated to analyse. Moreover I wonder how many kwH could have been saved if programms were written in more performant languages. (and there are better alternatives out there)
  • The missing type system makes it easy to make errors, and the missing compiler makes it hard to catch them
  • It has no linear algebra built in, so you always have to convert things to numpy arrays, which is quite annoying
  • Managing virtual environments and pip packages feels overly complicated

I guess much comes down to personal, but I just can't understand the love for python.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] scharf_2x40 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, ofc every language must have a type system, the problem is, that this is not enforced. I.e 3 == '3' throws no error, when working with dataframes for example this can be a pain in the ass. But yeah, I don't say that nobody should use Python (although the title is a bit dramatic) I just think that there are better alternatives out there.

[–] toasteecup 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It's not enforced because python like a number of other languages isn't a strictly typed language. That decision was made by the creator of python and has been continued to this day, it wasn't a part of their vision for python.

I would suggest you consider using a different language since you obviously don't care for python based on that complaints you've used that mirror complaints from every other person who "just doesn't see the use of python".

Protip: I'm willing to bet that if your code is slow, it needs some refactoring. That or you could consider compiling your python into C code.

[–] scharf_2x40 2 points 10 months ago

Python is strongly typed, but dynamically checked. Working with other languages I just found, that the type errors in python are the hardest to catch and to debug, but maybe I am just more used to othet languages

I see it's use as language to write small scripts, I just don't see much use besides that.

Here is a article talking about the speed of compiled python vs Julia. I don't see why it is better to go to all these extra steps just to end up with something slower. https://www.matecdev.com/posts/julia-python-numba-cython.html

[–] scharf_2x40 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

But I took your advice to heart and installed a Linter

[–] toasteecup 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I'd recommend a code formatter as well, it won't improve code execution but it greatly improves readability which is a massive plus to me. I love black personally