Python needs an actual default function
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That is not how Python works. There are very few languages that work by executing line-by-line anymore. Unix shell scripts are one of the few holdouts. JavaScript also does it to a certain extent; the browser starts executing line-by-line while a compiler step works in the background. Once the compiler is done, it starts execution of the compiled form right where the line-by-line execution left off. It helps JavaScript be more responsive since it doesn't have to wait for the compiler to finish.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Unix shell scripts are one of the few holdouts.
I don't know if this applies to other shells, but bash will not only execute your script line-by-line, it will also read it line-by-line. Which means that you can modify the behavior of a running script by editing lines that have not yet been executed*. It's absolutely bonkers, and I'm sure that it has caused more than one system failure, during upgrades.
* For example, if you run the following script
echo "hello" sleep 5 echo "goodbye"and then edit the third line before the 5 second sleep has elapsed, then the modified line will be executed.
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Well now. My primary exposure to Go would be using it to take first place in my company's 'Advent of Code' several years ago, in order to see what it was like, after which I've been pleased never to have to use it again. Some of our teams have used it to provide microservices - REST APIs that do database queries, some lightweight logic, and conversion to and from JSON - and my experience of working with that is that they've inexplicably managed to scatter all the logic among dozens of files, for what might be done with 80 lines of Python. I suspect the problem in that case is the developers, though.
It has some good aspects - I like how easy it is to do a static build that can be deployed in a container.
The actual language itself I find fairly abominable. The lack of exceptions means that error handling is all through everything, and not necessarily any better than other modern languages. The lack of overloads means that you'll have multiple definitions of eg.
Math.mincluttering things up. I don't think the container classes are particularly good. The implementation of pointers seems solely implemented to let you have null pointer exceptions, it's a pointless wart.If what you're wanting to code is the kind of thing that Google do, in the exact same way that Google do it, and you have a team of hipsters who all know how it works, then it may be a fine choice. Otherwise I would probably recommend using something else.
This is the most excellent summary of Go I have ever read. I agree with everything you've said, although as a fan of Scala and in particular its asynchronous programming ecosystem (cats for me, but I'll forgive those who prefer the walled garden of zio) I would also add that, whilst its async model with go routines is generally pretty easy to use, it can shit the bed on some highly-concurrent workloads and fail to schedule stuff in time that it really should've, and because it's such a mother-knows-best language there's fuck all you can do to give higher priority to the threads that you happen to know need more TLC
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Letting the developer decide what the code should do.
I don't understand. What do you mean by deciding what the code should do in the context of language design? Can you give a concrete example? I am confused because the "main" function is required when you make an executable. Otherwise, a library will not contain any main function and we could compile it just fine no? (Shared library)
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I don't understand. What do you mean by deciding what the code should do in the context of language design? Can you give a concrete example? I am confused because the "main" function is required when you make an executable. Otherwise, a library will not contain any main function and we could compile it just fine no? (Shared library)
Python is an interpreted language that doesn't need a main function explicitly. You can define any package entry points you want at the package config level. (setup.py, etc)
example:
What I meant was I prefer language that treat developers like adults. If I want ptrhon's "ux" to hide some functions or objects I can do that with underscores, but nothing is private, a developer using my library can do whatever they want with it, access whatever internals they want (at their own risk of course) -
What's the difference between a "scripting" language and a "real" one?
Scripting languages are real. Generally people consider dynamic languages scripting languages but it's not that simple.
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Not having tons of code in one if statement, but in a function.
I thought you were saying to literally use
def main(): pass, that’s why I was confused -
Unix shell scripts are one of the few holdouts.
I don't know if this applies to other shells, but bash will not only execute your script line-by-line, it will also read it line-by-line. Which means that you can modify the behavior of a running script by editing lines that have not yet been executed*. It's absolutely bonkers, and I'm sure that it has caused more than one system failure, during upgrades.
* For example, if you run the following script
echo "hello" sleep 5 echo "goodbye"and then edit the third line before the 5 second sleep has elapsed, then the modified line will be executed.
I have run into the problem of modifying a bash script while it is running.
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Python doesn't need the name main check to function at all. that's just a convenience feature that lets developers also include arbitrary entry points into modules that are part of a library and expected to be used as such. If you're writing a script, a file with a single line in it reading
print("hello world")will work fine when run:python thescript.pywrote on last edited by [email protected]Yes, because
In the first kind of language, the thought process is basically: I have the flow of execution, starting at the top of the file. If I want to make a library, I should build the things I want to build, then get out of the way.
Note the "I have the flow of execution", and the "if I want to build a library".
If you just want to build an executable, do as you wish, you already have the flow of execution.
If you want to build a library, make the relevant classes and functions and get out of the way (i.e., no IO, no long-running tasks).
If you want to combine them, use the main name check - or, make a package and do entry points that way. Either way works, because both can fulfill the goal of staying out of the way of those importing this as a library.
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Agreed. I program mainly in C so its easier for me to make sense of bad C code than bad python code which just makes me cry
Does Lua rank far below python for you? I have so much rage against it. At least with Python I don't have to do a bunch of steps to just get it to do something. May take me a while to get through bad Python code, but Lua makes my eyes bleed and I begin to regret my life choices in trying to understand wtf these people wrote.
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Also, do y'all call main() in the if block or do you just put the code you want to run in the if block?
The if block is where my arg parser goes
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As much as I am inclined to agree with this, still can't
see: LISP
Also, see: Python with more than three lines of logic. I could suspect that's just the me-versus-whitespaces thing, but no, YAML files do not get me dizzy in under thirty seconds of reading. Van Rossum made a huge miscalculation here
Everyone's welcome to their opinion of course, but I find Python more readable than anything else and I resent the visual clutter required to make intentions plain in other languages. Feels like having a conversation where people say the words "comma", "period", etc.
I also spend more time with Python than anything else and I suspect these two facts about me relate, lol
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What's the difference between a "scripting" language and a "real" one?
A scripting language controls an existing binary. A non-scripting language is used to create a new binary.
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Also, do y'all call main() in the if block or do you just put the code you want to run in the if block?
main.pyor did you not read the manual? -
Also, do y'all call main() in the if block or do you just put the code you want to run in the if block?
Depends on how lazy I am at the moment.
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I intended this an sarcastic example; I think it's worse than putting the main outside of the branch because of the extra indent-level. It does have an upside that the
main()doesn't exist if you try import this as an module.I thought confusion about indent levels was the whole point of using python
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Everyone's welcome to their opinion of course, but I find Python more readable than anything else and I resent the visual clutter required to make intentions plain in other languages. Feels like having a conversation where people say the words "comma", "period", etc.
I also spend more time with Python than anything else and I suspect these two facts about me relate, lol
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Someone should get their hands on someone like me and someone like you and study their brains. I spend most time with PHP and C++, and Python looks like an attempt to write code like prose literature. Very interesting how much of this is habbit, as it can't be just that: reading prose and poetry in English/Russian/Japanese never produced this kind of resentment
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I thought you were saying to literally use
def main(): pass, that’s why I was confusedOh, no, that's just the usual placeholder. Though, ... would also be valid iirc, and would fit better as a "TODO" placeholder
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Also, do y'all call main() in the if block or do you just put the code you want to run in the if block?
I've always found needing to manually add a class instance parameter (i.e.
self) to every object method really weird. And the constructors being named__init__. Not having multiple dispatch is kinda annoying too. Needing to use decorators for class methods, static methods, and abstract classes is also annoying. Now that I think about it, Python kinda sucks (even though it's the language I use the most, lol). -
I feel that Python is a bit of a 'Microsoft Word' of languages. Your own scripts are obviously completely fine, using a sensible and pragmatic selection of the language features in a robust fashion, but everyone else's are absurd collections of hacks that fall to pieces at the first modification.
To an extent, 'other people's C++ / Bash scripts' have the same problem. I'm usually okay with 'other people's Java', which to me is one of the big selling points of the language - the slight wordiness and lack of 'really stupid shit' makes collaboration easier.
Now, a Python script that's more than about two pages long? That makes me question its utility. The 'duck typing' everywhere makes any code that you can't 'keep in your head' very difficult to reason about.
other people's Java
I'm gonna have to disagree here, it's always a guessing game of how many layers of abstraction they've used to seemingly avoid writing any implementation code... Can't put the code related to "bicycles" in the
Bicycleclass, no, that obviously goes inWheeledDeviceServiceFactoryBeanImplthat's in the 'utils' package. -
other people's Java
I'm gonna have to disagree here, it's always a guessing game of how many layers of abstraction they've used to seemingly avoid writing any implementation code... Can't put the code related to "bicycles" in the
Bicycleclass, no, that obviously goes inWheeledDeviceServiceFactoryBeanImplthat's in the 'utils' package.Enough of that crazy talk - plainly
WheeledDeviceServiceFactoryBeanImplis where the dependency injection annotations are placed. If you can decide what the code does without stepping through it with a debugger, and any backtrace doesn't have at least two hundred lines of Spring boot, then plainly it isn't enterprise enough.Fair enough, though. You can write stupid overly-abstract shit in any language, but Java does encourage it.
