Will python ever change over to another coding

Question

turn into something not like python

Answer 1

Popularity begets popularity; the feedback loop is dangerous to innovation because you can get stuck cultivating fame, popularity and market penetration instead of taking interesting risks. The inertia of popular adoption may keep Python stuck in its current form--like typecasting a superstar--or like Python 4 seeking NOT to divide its fans like versions 2 and 3.

This inertia may also be apparent in rival languages that persist for a while, then fade to the spotlight's periphery instead of innovating back into it. On the one hand "these languages are mature", or maybe they're no longer agile, anything-goes startups...now they're tied to corporate responsibility in the marriage to duty / status quo they created. Neither is "wrong", but it's interesting that Guido's quit:

https://hub.packtpub.com/why-guido-van-rossum-quit/

I'm not counting on Python significantly changing. Its path appears to be like the rest: general popularity then replacement--unless someone forks it to sidestep its current inertia.

Answer 2

Kirk Schafer What is this blasphemous rubbish you're spewing onto this noblest of inquiries within our esteemed community?

The audacity to challenge the unquestionable wisdom of the BDFL, his mass following of loyal Pythonistas, and the credibility of the TIOBE index is an unprecedented offense of epic proportions.

Grievances of high moral culpability like this can only be committed by someone with Machiavellian tendencies.

Booo... I say... boooo!

We will never succumb to deceptive tactics attempting to besmirch the infallibility and perfection of our beloved Python.

We see what you're doing by trying to razzle dazzle us with facts, logical reasoning, rationale thinking, and common sense. Pfsst... I say phooey to all your fancy schmancy, hoity toity, tomfoolery.

You'd have a better chance of convincing us the world is round, instead of being flat. 🤣🌎😂😜

Now you see how super duper smart we really are. 👌

Answer 3

Hmmm. Python just entered the TIOBE index top 3, displacing c++:
https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index

Skimming Slashdot post + HN discussion:
https://developers.slashdot.org/story/18/07/20/227246/is-python-the-future-of-programming
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17583512

We can see where people think Python's going. Here's a link for the discussed economist article (shorter version not blocked by paywall):
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/07/26/python-is-becoming-the-worlds-most-popular-coding-language

...in that article:
"it's rivals are unlikely to disappear" "...[a rising power's] rivals generally survive in the technical and cultural niches in which they emerged"

From that (and Guido wanting Python 4 to NOT be a breaking upgrade like v2 -> v3), you could infer that Python (like the other languages) will hover in its niche for a while.

[just one way to look at this]

Answer 4

Kirk Schafer Hmm... How strange...

I was trying to type:

"Awesome, awesome answer!"

Auto correct must have gone crazy resulting in the post above. 🤣😂

Reminds me of another awesome post:

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https://www.quora.com/What-are-criticisms-of-JUMP_LINK__&&__Python__&&__JUMP_LINK/answer/Mateusz-Malisz
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Python has (mostly) followers, not programmers.
This is minor complaint, but from my experience I’ve found Python programmers to be more of a followers than programmers. Most of my discussions on IRC or “real life” when I found some surprising behaviours(or the scoping), most of the time people weren’t eager to discuss the language, and it was me who was doing things wrong(well, in python, you’re supposed to do X using Y, not Z!). The funniest example of this was my friend who, when shown the example of scopes with list comprehension and asked how this should behave, first got it wrong, and when I told her correct answer - she started defending it as a correct and natural one - even though just moments before she guessed wrong!

Answer 5

Tibor Santa You might also enjoy these surveys:

https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2019/

https://www.jetbrains.com/research/devecosystem-2018/

https://research.hackerrank.com/developer-skills/2019

Answer 6

Kirk Schafer I was quite shocked at this sentence in the article you quoted:
"the TIOBE index, which tracks coding practices among professional developers"
I would have expected The Economist to not make such a blatant mistake. The Tiobe is actually made up from search engine statistics, and nothing to do with the habits of professional developers.

I think this is also the main source of Python's recent rise of popularity. The gentle learning curve enables a lot of non-professional developers to get into programming, and use Python in their narrow field for various support or research tasks, without necessarily involving the "corporate IT department". I might call it the cyber-empowerment of the general population.
Is Python really the best or most ideal language for this? That's really up to debate I am not comfortable with, mostly because I don't know any better option. I always marvel at Ruby codes when I see them on SL, yet it seems to be losing popularity in spite of being very similar to Python.

Answer 7

Tibor Santa Based on how I'm interpreting Kirk's answers, I believe he, too, is recognizing the disparity of what is reflected in the TIOBE Index from reality.

I, too, was scratching my head when I read the same quote you cited from the Economist. Especially since the author appears to understand that the TIOBE Index is based on search activity with this quote, "In the past 12 months Americans have searched for Python on Google more often than for Kim Kardashian, a reality-TV star."

While the index is an interesting data point to look at, it should never be used as a reference or gauge for "popular" languages.

Case in point... this year alone, I'm quite confident I've done 10x+ searches on Python than all of my core languages combined.

However, I don't use Python for work, I don't prefer the language, and it's certainly not popular with me.

I wonder how many of these searches involve, general questions like the one posted here compared to more technical ones indicating a programmer. 🤔🤷‍♂️

Answer 8

Your question leaves a lot of room for ambiguity. Please add more details

Answer 9

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-JUMP_LINK__&&__Python__&&__JUMP_LINK-not-used-for-professional-software-development

Oh look a random bunch of people answering

Answer 10

David Carroll I don't doubt the accuracy or relevance of Tiobe (Python is on the rise without a doubt), only argued about the interpretation.
If we want to look at the opinion of professional programmers, I think the stackoverflow survey is a better benchmark because it does contain other dimensions about the social and professional background of the subjects.
https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019

So my theory really is that much of this popularity is due to "unprofessional" usage of Python, such as hobbyists, students, scientists, curious and tech-savvy office workers who want to explore new tools besides Excel, Gen Z newbies who are comfortable with technology. They don't write quality software professionally, but find Python easy and powerful enough to accomplish things, that would otherwise take tedious manual effort or would have been too complicated of an IT challenge.

Of couse just a theory here, based on some observation, I don't have research data to support it. ☺️

Answer 11

[Response to Emoji FanBoy Part 1 of 2]

LOL... I didn't see that quote. Without any context, it's hard not to assume the person making this statement has no idea they are literally speaking gibberish. 😂🤣

Nothing about that quote makes sense in any general context that comes to mind.

Increasing the number of servers running Python to improve performance "might" only address concurrent requests. However, it certainly doesn't address the performance of a single request, nor does it address potential bottlenecks in any middleware processes. So... that's just silly.

Increasing the number of developers on a project has no relevance to the performance of an application. Perhaps, the person thinks performant languages are so difficult to learn, it requires 100 developers to get anything done.

Um... no.

Perhaps the person believes there is a 1 to 1 correlation of number of servers running Python with the number of developers for another language.

Um... no again.

(continued...)

Answer 12

[Response to Emoji FanBoy Part 2 of 2]

Perhaps this person is a blind follower of Python with no experience in anything else and only marginal experience in Python.

Probably. 🤷‍♂️

As I've become more familiar with Python over the past year, I can honestly say nothing about this language is easier or faster to use than any other language. It is, however, full of language design compromises and is far more susceptible to bugs in the code and harder to maintain over the long term.

Somehow, I don't think 100 servers will be able to address those major issues. 😱

Answer 13

I find that JavaScript is just as readable if not more readable than Python and is as easy to use as Python. But maybe that’s just because I use JavaScript a lot more than Python. If there was a poll for the most readable language, I’d have to vote for Lua because it’s so simple and has little to no quirks/oddities. As a consequence, a program written in it does tend to have more lines than the equivalent JavaScript/Python program because it lacks many of the complexities those languages have, such as convenient class syntax. Instead, I have to define classes as objects that have a method that returns a new object with the specified properties. This slightly inconvenient syntax produces a few extra lines.

Answer 14

thank you for all your answers it really gives me a good idea

Answer 15

Prometheus 🇸🇬 One quote amused me on the link you shared,
"If you are worried about performance consider this: it's a lot easier and cheaper to just fire up 100 additional servers than hire 100 additional engineers."

Quite a statement…🤣