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.