[Chicago] Python Hype

[David Matsumura]

It might be interesting to examine perl, ruby, and/or fortran and see if
you could document their path through the hype lifecycle. When was peak
perl? Did perl ever make it's way back up the ramp of productivity?

Would also be interesting to compare to Java and/or C. Does the curve look
different for compiled vs interpreted languages? It seems to me that they
have been more durable after hitting peak, would be interesting to tease
out their staying power.



On Thu, Apr 28, 2016 at 12:54 PM Hana Lee <hanalee07 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't know if this really counts as negative press or just idiosyncratic
> prefeerence, but I had an interesting conversation with a Ruby developer
> who intensely disliked Python (to the point of making a Slack trigger for
> it with "Wash your mouth out!" when I brought up Python). His main problem
> was semantic whitespace, which he claimed made it difficult to track down
> bugs. It surprised me because that's actually one of the aspects I like
> best about Python:  it enforces code readability, which makes it easier
> rather than harder for me to debug. I didn't push the argument though.
>
> In computational biology circles, where there was a massive wave of
> adopting Python after primarily using Perl, the switch was often described
> in terms of a religious conversion experience. I got on the boat myself
> after being told, "Python makes me enjoy programming again." I don't think
> there's really been any negative press there yet, so peak of the hype cycle
> is probably appropriate there.
>
> Sincerely,
> Hana
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