Python and the need for speed

[Steve D'Aprano]

On Wed, 12 Apr 2017 08:42 am, Rick Johnson wrote:

> The fact that both Google AND DropBox are ignoring Python,
> must be devastating to GvR

Fact check: liar, liar, pants on fire.

Neither Google nor DropBox are "ignoring Python". From two randomly selected
technical job positions currently offered:

"Strong coding skills in an object-oriented language (Python preferred)"

https://www.dropbox.com/jobs/listing/184604

"Your knowledge of Python a plus"

https://www.dropbox.com/jobs/listing/91407

Google likewise has a huge investment in Python code. *Even if* they decide
to move entirely to Go for new code (unlikely), Python will still have a
role to play at Google for years, possibly decades.



Rick, you must be really insecure about your choice of language, given how
much you obsess about other people leaving Python for other languages.
You're constantly writing about (imaginary) other people leaving Python, or
being unhappy with Python, or "voting with their feet". Well, people do
vote with their feet, and Python is consistently in the most popular
handful of languages.

http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2017/03/17/language-rankings-1-17/

https://blog.newrelic.com/2016/08/18/popular-programming-languages-2016-go/

http://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html

https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

I still remember your first, or at least a very early, post as Ranting Rick
where you were *terrified* that unless GvR did exactly what you said, the
entire Python community was going to pack up and move to Ruby. It was real
Chicken Little "The Sky Is Falling" stuff.

Well, GvR didn't pay the least bit of attention to your "advice", in fact he
has continued to move Python in directions that you hate -- Unicode as the
default string type, type annotations, Python 3 -- and far from suffering
for it, the Python community is bigger and stronger than ever.

How is your "Rick Python" coming along? Its been, what, ten years, fifteen
years since you promised to give the "silent majority" exactly the Python
language they wanted, and we're still waiting for you to publish a single
line of code.




-- 
Steve
“Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure
enough, things got worse.