Article on the future of Python

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, 28 Sep 2012 14:50:14 -0400, Devin Jeanpierre wrote:

> I'm pretty sure nobody thinks Python is on a death march.

Don't be so sure. There's always *someone* complaining about something, 
and they're usually convinced that (Language X) is on it's last legs 
because (feature Y) is missing or (event Z) happened.

Seriously. If you believe the haters and the complainers, Python will 
never be taken seriously as a language because:

- it has significant whitespace.
- it doesn't have braces.
- it doesn't have static typing.
- Python is too slow.
- it has lost momentum to Ruby on RAILS.
- it has lost momentum to Javascript.
- it doesn't have a real garbage collector that can collect cycles.
- oh, Python has had one of those for a decade? I meant a garbage
  collector that can collect cycles involving objects with __del__
  methods.
- threads aren't exactly like threads in some other language.
- Python only uses a single core of the CPU.
- I mean CPython. IronPython and Jython don't count.
- I mean ordinary Python code, using multiprocessing doesn't count.
- Neither do C extensions or numpy.
- Python changes too fast. People can't keep up. Python should be an ISO
  standard managed by a committee, like C, with a guarantee that 30 year
  old code will run in the latest version.
- Python changes too slow. People can't use all these great new features.
  It has gotten too big and the developers care too much about backward
  compatibility and aren't willing to delete cruft from the language.
- you can't compile to native machine code. No language can possibly be
  successful with byte-code running in a virtual machine.
- it isn't a pure object-oriented language exactly like Java.
- you can't hide your source code from the end user. People will
  STEEEAAAAAL MY INTELLECTUUUUUUUALLLLLL PROPERTY!!!
- oh, you can? Yeah, but it's too hard, and besides they might decompile
  the .pyc files.
- Python 3 is a failure and has split the community.


I think I've got all the most common reasons for dismissing Python. 
"Python has lost ground to Flash" is a new one for me, as is "Python ate 
my mobile phone's batteries".


In a way, it's quite unfortunate that you can't write a blog post 
discussing weaknesses of a language (as opposed to strengths) without 
turning it into fuel for the haters:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4567023

But when you give a blog post an inflammatory title like "I am worried 
about the future of Python", what do you expect?



-- 
Steven