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Comment by zxy | Hacker News Reader

But then there's python.

The reason people don't complain about Python is because if you don't like the language, there is no reason to use it, so they don't. When people are forced to use it, they do complain--stupid scoping, horrible lambdas, no pattern-matching, weird desugaring, idiotic default argument semantics and so on. (These are all the things I've heard about it from other students in my compilers course.)

People use C and C++ when they need fast code close to the machine. People use Java when they need more portability but can't sacrifice performance completely. People only use Python because they like it.

I have always felt Python is the new Java. Same qualities of verbosity, low barrier to entries.

And weird level of verbosity for a scripting language.

I do not know why someone has downvoted zxy. He/she has the point: python is used by many but few dislike it. Python is a third kind: the ones people like. Bjarne was looking for excuses for his bad C++.

I don't know, I know a ton of people who don't like Python. The difference is that unlike C or C++ or even Java, if you don't like the language itself there is no compelling reason to use Python, and so those people don't.

That said, when people do have to use Python, like in my compilers class right now, quite a lot are not happy with it. (Even the professor gets annoyed with it; I really don't know why we're using it.) So I think there is just much more selection bias in the land of Python than in C++ or Java.

Yes, that could explain off some differences between python and C++ in these two polls, but right now, over 95% python voters favor it as opposed to about 50% for C++. I can hardly believe your argument alone can explain off this huge difference. Also, look at C and C#. A lot of programmers are forced to use them, too, but they seem to like them better than C++ at least in the HN community. On the other hand, I agree that Python may not be the best choice for a course on the compiler theory. I am sure more would hate python if they were asked to develop a linux kernel with python.

I complain about python all the time, but I'm in the minority.

Is that the language with `pass`?

Are you complaining about the backticks or the pass keyword, or both?

Strike!

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