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Comment by ericra | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure it's a big mystery. It's pleasant to write and allows devs to get things done quickly. Many of your criticisms are strange..

For instance, I don't see how it's necessarily a memory hog. I wrote a (relatively simple) Windows/Linux GUI application in Python that I use regularly, and it uses around 20MB of RAM.

I'm not familiar with how many breaking changes have been made in Python 3, but I suspect there haven't been many major ones in the last 10 years (since 3.4). It would be interesting to see a list, though.

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Mailman 3 is written in Python using Django.

It is a case in point in my argument "NOT Python"

Mailman 1 was written in 40k lines of Perl (Another sin, Perl too is a scripting language not an application development language, but I digress)

Mailman 3 required me to upgrade a VPS to 2GB to get it to run. People (I forget who) tell me it is the installation part of installing Django - which is Python- that hogs the memory. As if I care. The waste is staggering.

I think we should all stop using Python

" It's pleasant to write and allows devs to get things done quickly. " Perhaps, for short lasting and small things. But people are building cathedrals out of this.

" It's pleasant to write and allows devs to get things done quickly. "

Use Lisp

I agree with some of the things you argue, but I do think it is more a matter of how Python is typically used rather than the language itself. There are quite a lot of optimizations that can be done for speed and other metrics in both web and local applications, but people will migrate toward frameworks that instead focus on ease of management and maintenance (like Django).

I agree there is a lot of bloat in some cases. All I'm saying is that one has the option use Python in a more "responsible"/efficient way, and there are plenty of projects which do so.

> one has the option use Python in a more "responsible"/efficient way

That is so true.

I wish it was the dominant way people used Python.

The lack of backward compatibility is still a bad thing. How can that be avoided by being responsible and/or efficient?

I actually have no knowledge of the Python project ruling committee's policy on backward compatibility, I would be interested in those policies, and if they imply a way to stay safe.

Saying, like I do, "Just do not use Python" is a bit of a waste of time (will not stop me). It would be nice to caution people: "Avoid this and that Python thing because it is vulnerable to being deprecated and use this and those which are not".

I suspect there is no such policy. There are times when being wrong is a good thing....

You are saying that all people should switch from Python to Lisp because the software you are using consumes too much RAM.

Yes

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