Article on the future of Python

[Devin Jeanpierre]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 8:59 PM, alex23 <wuwei23 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sep 28, 2:17 am, Devin Jeanpierre <jeanpierr... at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Uncharitably, it's just a way of hiding one's head in the sand,
>> ignoring any problems Python has by focusing on what problems it
>> doesn't have.
>
> But isn't that what counterpoint is all about?

Actually I think it's about the charitable interpretation. Nobody
writes an article and says, "I'm going to stick my head in the sand".
I do believe the article is trying to provide a counterweight to the
gloomy mood set by the first.

> Calvin's article
> highlighted what he felt were areas that Python isn't successful,
> while Tim McNamara's pointed out areas it was. Just because Python
> isn't used much in commercial video games doesn't undermine the point
> that it's heavily used in education and research.

Absolutely. But also, vice versa -- just because Python is a wonderful
language for education and research does not mean that its problems in
commercial video games are not worth looking at.

> Does Python _have_ to be a go-to tool in gaming for it to not be on
> its death march?

I don't think anyone is arguing it's on a death march, just that there
are issues that we downplay but should address to keep a vibrant and
diverse community. Or something.

I'm pretty sure nobody thinks Python is on a death march.

> Or more to the point: rather than just complain about it... It's not
> like there aren't active communities that _are_ working in this area:
> PyGame, pyglet, Kivy are all projects that can be contributed to.

Haha, I wouldn't phrase it as "complaining".

Of these, I have mixed feelings. For example, Calvin has concerns that
Python isn't so good on mobile because battery usage (or some such
thing). I have no experience on mobile development, so no comment
there. I intend to use Kivy this weekend actually, so... Maybe this
one is very promising!

You didn't mention it, but for the browser issue there is PyJS... but
we've all heard the issues that project has. Not sure if there are
sane alternatives. Perhaps Silverlight? In all cases you end up with
output that's rather large. I'm not sure how practical it is, in the
end, to use Python. It may just be that the difference in productivity
for common web tasks, is tiny enough that the difficulty of setting up
an efficient python->JS toolchain is overwhelming.

As for pygame and pyglet, and game development, well, those are
things. That's a sort of frustrating response for a number of reasons,
but I'll keep it to just one:

Those have been around for a very long time, and are very stable (to
the point where the infrequency of updates sometimes leads to
questions as to whether they're even maintained (I think they are)).
The situation for using Python for game development is virtually
unchanged in the past several years, and it's been failing for the
past several years, so these two projects can't fix it. If these are
the best we have, barring additional argument we are going nowhere on
this front.

For what it's worth, I think there are much larger problems in the
game development world than how well Python is faring. Open source
projects for game development are few and of not-so-amazing quality.

> I love using Python and will endeavour to do so wherever I can, but
> it's always going to be the case that a language has strengths &
> weaknesses that other languages lack.

Absolutely! Python will never be perfect. There will always be paths
we can take to improve it. And we should always seek to improve it, as
long as we stand behind it as a good and useful language compared to
the alternatives.

On the other hand, I will not use Python "wherever I can". I will use
it wherever it makes the most sense to use it. For example, I would
write a first person shooter game in C# and Unity 3D, and I would
write my AJAX website in Javascript. It's just easier for me that way.
Why use Python if it makes my job harder?

-- Devin