What kind of shitty reasoning leads to this? "Oh, let's introduce this elementary mathematics to the illiterate masses by writing it as a Python script. Now everyone will understand it!" This is a lack of respect for the agency of the readers.
What kind of shitty reasoning leads to this? "Oh, let's introduce this elementary mathematics to the illiterate masses by writing it as a Python script. Now everyone will understand it!" This is a lack of respect for the agency of the readers.
There is value is static typing, but there are many instances where that cost is not worth the reward.
I would expect a post entitled “exploring mathematics with python” to have a whole lot more python code (inline with the text and better explained instead of an uncommented blob at the end) and a whole lot more mathematics.
A more accurately descriptive title for this post might be “counting the repetitions among randomly chosen positive integers”.... which of course isn’t going to get as many clicks or as many reflexive upvotes from non-readers as a post promising “exploring mathematics with python” because it doesn’t sound (and frankly isn’t) all that interesting to most readers. (It might make a decent short project for middle school students though.)
Personally I flagged the post for its misleading title.
It's not the author's fault if you bring your own baggage to the words.
This is needlessly dismissive and frankly offensive.
I prefer having errors from a compiler(or static analysis, or...) because it helps me. Not because I am a better programmer but because it helps me be a better programmer.
> Compiler: Hey that type doesn't work there
Oh! Thank you! I meant to use this type instead.
> Compiler: This value is freed here but used right afterward here
I meant to clone it. Whoops. That would have been embarrassing to debug in production!
And so on.
I absolutely recognize that it's a barrier to entry, but it's not one erected to keep people out, it's there to catch your mistakes for you so that you spend less time debugging and more time writing your actual application.
That's true. If I start doing that, please call me out on it. From the HN Guidelines:
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.[0]
I'm very much not a fan of meaningful whitespace, but I use Python occasionally, and regularly help my friends who are learning it grasp this or that topic. Except where pointing them to a specific library or other tool, I've never said "You shouldn't do that in Python, do it in this other language instead".
I was responding specifically to the content that I quoted, which came from the post that I replied to.
> It seems you just meant to criticize the title, or...?
I should note that I am not the person who started this comment thread.
They were criticizing the post title as they did not believe that the contents within were specific to Python.
They were not criticizing Python either. Rather they were saying that the word Python in the title appears to be used to attract viewers who might otherwise be intimidated by the contents, instead of being relevant to the contents of that article.