Python is the most popular programming language and beloved by many. However I can’t understand why (this is still the case in 2024).

Here are my main gripes with it:

  • It is slow, performance intensive tasks have to be offloaded to other languages, which makes it complicated to analyse. Moreover I wonder how many kwH could have been saved if programms were written in more performant languages. (and there are better alternatives out there)
  • The missing type system makes it easy to make errors, and the missing compiler makes it hard to catch them
  • It has no linear algebra built in, so you always have to convert things to numpy arrays, which is quite annoying
  • Managing virtual environments and pip packages feels overly complicated

I guess much comes down to personal, but I just can’t understand the love for python.

  • CaptainBasculin
    2·
    9 months ago

    Programming languages are typically chosen based on what is needed. All of them have some features and lack some of them per their nature.

    If I’m working on a small script that needs to interact with various different objects and doesn’t need to be optimised; I’ll use Python to write it.