• boletus@sh.itjust.works
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    9 months ago

    Python is fine as a language I guess

    But python programmers give it a bad name. I’ve never seen “well written” python code, it’s always shit that’s been thrown together cos it works.

    • herrvogel@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I use python exclusively when I want to quickly throw some shit together that nobody’s ever gonna spend any time maintaining, so that tracks.

      • Anahkiasen@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        9 months ago

        Doesn’t Python 3 have types? I’ve seen a few well typed codebases and it really made the code much easier to understand. Or is it just that it’s not checking them strongly enough?

        • kaesaecracker@leminal.space
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          9 months ago

          The type annotations are just fancy comments. They do not do anything at runtime. If you have a function that takes an int someone can still pass in a list or anything else.

          • Anahkiasen@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            9 months ago

            But will it run? I’m used to typescript where it’s not checked at runtime but you can’t “build” unsafe types I’d assume it’s the same here

            • AVincentInSpace@pawb.social
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              8 months ago

              no they really are just fancy comments. You can do runtime reflection on them if you wanna make something fancy like a plugin system but that’s about it

      • boletus@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        I think python is good as it is for what it can do, mostly because I have no reason to use it.

        What we need is lua with types!

        • Shush@reddthat.com
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          9 months ago

          Have you heard of Typescript-to-lua? I used to do Dota modding (which is in lua) with TSTL and it works great!

          You write TS code (using Typescript syntax that includes types) and it is compiled into lua.

          Wonder if that could be an alternative that can work for you.

          • boletus@sh.itjust.works
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            9 months ago

            That sounds pretty neat thank you. At some point lua had an official typed extension that is no longer maintained unfortunately. Hopefully there’s a stable fork one day.

            • Shush@reddthat.com
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              9 months ago

              Oh yeah, I heard it was poorly recieved. The syntax wasn’t great and generally the support sucked. AFAIK there is no progress on types for lua.

    • marwwin@suppo.fi
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      9 months ago

      Arrow functions should be used only for callbacks. I hate that people has started defining named functions with arrow functions in JS. Arrow functions are not hoisted and the ordering of your functions is going to get wonky, because you need to define all you functions first before composing them, when it should be the other way around. Start with the most high-level function which calls lower level functions.

      • Paradoxvoid@aussie.zone
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        9 months ago

        I had this exact fight with my team several months ago, and lost to popular opinion since the rest of my team are either zoomers or indifferent.

        • JonEFive@midwest.social
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          9 months ago

          I’ve reached the point that I cringe at the mention of arrow functions because so many people seem to always want to use arrow functions.

          Like I’m looking up something on stack overflow and half the answers are arrow functions that are that way for no other reason than to use the fun little =>

        • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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          9 months ago

          All good programming teams are run as benevolent dictatorships for precisely this kind of reason.

    • vext01@lemmy.sdf.org
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      9 months ago

      Depends what you are working on.

      Like all languages, they all have pros and cons.

      Language evangelism doesn’t help really…

    • AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      While I personally agree that Python sucks, largely because I don’t agree with whitespace indentation defining blocks and I also don’t like Java…I’m neutral on Go, depending on the use case.

      I know plenty of people who love Python, but I kind of wonder if it’s because they were brought up on it. I wasn’t. So we’re just in different camps. Whatever floats your boat I guess.

      • relevants@feddit.de
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        9 months ago

        I was brought up on Python and also do not like it for a variety of reasons, both practical and by personal preference. I also have the opinion that if you are trying to learn software engineering it is not a good language to start out with, despite it being so easy to pick up at first.

        Some people try to use Python’s popularity as a counterpoint, and while it does show that my view is a minority opinion, it’s not a very convincing argument for the language itself.

        • evranch
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          9 months ago

          if you are trying to learn software engineering it is not a good language to start out with

          Curious what options you would suggest instead? I’m an old C/++ embedded diehard, but I do use Python and have been considering it as the next step for my 9yo daughter after Scratch.

          Python feels like the modern replacement for Basic that I grew up with as a kid. Interpreted, garbage collected, good library support, sane typing and not too wordy or confusing. Lots of options to do fun things with it from games to robots.

          IMO for a young beginner the C-likes are too strict and segfault-y, Perl is too permissive and could breed sloppy habits, Basic is obsolete, all the web languages are way too application specific, I haven’t had a chance to get into Rust yet, and fuck Java as a matter of principle lol.

          • relevants@feddit.de
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            9 months ago

            Well, I think for a 9 year old it’s fine. I think the stage where you would run into issues is when trying to get into “actual” software development, where the flexibility in scoping and typing afforded by Python can lead to some bad habits (e.g. overusing global/shared variables, declaring them from within functions, catching errors late instead of validating data first, …)

            I don’t have a ton of experience with it but I think C# strikes a pretty good balance between strictness and beginner-friendliness. Modern Java isn’t all that bad either, though it doesn’t have very good options for fun things to build. But again, I don’t think this necessarily applies to a child; I’m an educator at a university so both my target audience and point of reference are freshman compsci students.

            • evranch
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              9 months ago

              Thanks for your input, C# is a language I never really considered but it does sound like a good middle ground and possibility a good successor to Python for her. Very popular, powerful and a better approach to a “true OOP” language than Java IMO. Though as you state modern Java has come a long way from its origins.

              overusing global/shared variables

              I see you’ve been reviewing my Python code, lol. The structure of the language does lend itself to using globals as a shortcut when they shouldn’t be… And as a primary embedded dev I will admit that I’m already a heavier user of globals than most. But I agree being able to declare global variables inside a function is pretty gross, as is the scoping/declaration issue where you can easily end up with global and local variables with the same name without even throwing a warning.

      • TheHarpyEagle@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I love python just because of the community. It is a very popular beginner language (for better or for worse, depending on who you ask) and its community has grown to embrace that. They have the most active Discord I’ve seen for a language and they do a lot to curb elitism and plain old rudeness. Not that other communities are necessarily bad, but the Python community is where I end up whenever I really want to feel passionate about programming.

      • rodolfo@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        you’ve probably read this many times before. prototyping, three users applications, routine, quick test, owning pretentious kids with some class inheritance, medium / small company data processing, free very good editors with all you need to code/debug, speed not necessary, my boss doesn’t like it… stuff like that

    • RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Having worked on all 3 of those I prefer python. I think C# is a much better Java alternative though. But it would depend on the project of course. Something like Python of JavaScript is nice for faster development. That’s my jam lol.

      As for it sucking ass. Idk about that but it may be a cool feature to try out

    • darcy@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      i agree. python only be used if absolutely necessary, such as machine learning and what not. and only because of its popularity and libraries. scripting? try bash or lua. making a cli/tui? try rust or c or something. web backend? god have mercy if you decide to use python for that.