Interesting to see how things have changed with time (11 years). Today, I’d easily say the same thing of Python (or Ruby) that was said of Java, and put any number of new, hip languages in Python’s place (my beloved Go included).
It’s interesting to think of a time when people learned Python because it was a cool new language, interesting from a language-geek or better-tools perspective. That phase somehow never appeared on my radar (I’m not doubting it existed, I just didn’t encounter it). I ran across Python because it started making inroads into scientific computing via its large set of libraries. So most people I know (including me) who use Python use it because of something useful that’s written in Python, which happens fairly often, because the Python scientific ecosystem is very large. So it’s less choosing Python per se, and more choosing NLTK, BioPython, matplotlib, IPython, etc. Python from that perspective is just the glue that comes with the ecosystem whether you like it or not. It happens to be a decent glue, but people would probably use it even if it weren’t (many of us use R too, whose language is not great).
I remember reading this article when I was younger and looking for the most awesome programming language (it’s a phase many of os go through). I’m not sure how much of this article started out false, or just became false over the last 11 years.
“people don’t learn Python because it will get them a job” is no longer true. That is literally why many people learn python now. There are over 50 courses on udemy targeting beginning python development. Learning to code these days usually starts with python or javascript.
Use of python is mentioned as a competetive advantage for google. The googlers I’ve met have implied python is on the way out (the youtube group may be an exception). The majority of googlers I know use java and go. Static typing is back in vogue.
Interesting to see how things have changed with time (11 years). Today, I’d easily say the same thing of Python (or Ruby) that was said of Java, and put any number of new, hip languages in Python’s place (my beloved Go included).
It’s interesting to think of a time when people learned Python because it was a cool new language, interesting from a language-geek or better-tools perspective. That phase somehow never appeared on my radar (I’m not doubting it existed, I just didn’t encounter it). I ran across Python because it started making inroads into scientific computing via its large set of libraries. So most people I know (including me) who use Python use it because of something useful that’s written in Python, which happens fairly often, because the Python scientific ecosystem is very large. So it’s less choosing Python per se, and more choosing NLTK, BioPython, matplotlib, IPython, etc. Python from that perspective is just the glue that comes with the ecosystem whether you like it or not. It happens to be a decent glue, but people would probably use it even if it weren’t (many of us use R too, whose language is not great).
Sadly Ruby is an industrial language now.
sadly?
I remember reading this article when I was younger and looking for the most awesome programming language (it’s a phase many of os go through). I’m not sure how much of this article started out false, or just became false over the last 11 years.
“people don’t learn Python because it will get them a job” is no longer true. That is literally why many people learn python now. There are over 50 courses on udemy targeting beginning python development. Learning to code these days usually starts with python or javascript.
Use of python is mentioned as a competetive advantage for google. The googlers I’ve met have implied python is on the way out (the youtube group may be an exception). The majority of googlers I know use java and go. Static typing is back in vogue.