I don’t recall seeing a programming language more hectic that Python. It looks like an April’s Fool joke that caught on with the public, like a hack that people just don’t let go.

I spent a few days reading some books about it and I got pretty good with it, but in many parts I consider it a hack. You want some examples, I assume:
– lists: add an item: append/insert method; get+remove an item: pop method (strange name matching)
– lists: add an item: append/insert method; remove an item: del STATEMENT (that’s right, not a method, but a statement)
– lists: add an item: append/insert method; get the size: len FUNCTION (that’s right, not a method, but a standalone function)
– iterate over items: for dicts use the iteritems method, for lists use the enumerate function
– and many others.

I like programming languages which are either brief, or well designed (so that you can “guess” how API calls will look like before you read about them, by extrapolating your previous experience in that language). Python is none of that. Moreover, IMHO it’s widespread use in Linux’s desktop apps is even hurting Linux’s image as a good desktop OS.

Now the good part: I like Python’s whitespaces matter approach. Again, it has some design problems, but it’s nice.

Python even has it’s own version of CPAN, the Python Package Index (PyPI, http://pypi.python.org/pypi) with an absolutely huge listing of packages.

And comparing Django and PHP is ridiculous as Django is a framework, PHP is not. This probably explains “anonymous”’s comment.

The one point I have to agree on is that Python is *S.L.O.W*, and although you can increase it’s speed quite easily (Psyco, Cython, C Extensions, Stackless Python (which is an incredible implementation), etc) and bring it up to scratch.

On whitespace: Yes, Python does use a HUGE amount of whitespace, but as “Just a Developer” pointed out, it’s not all necessary and does drastically increase the readability of your code. Someone tell me this is not criptic: for(@x){s/(http:.*)/urlencode($1)/eg} and this is the problem you will always face with people who don’t know the language they are talking about (and I am no exception, I don’t know ANY Perl)

~sigh~

LOL.

It is okay for PHP and ASP to be slow because PHP and ASP do not claim to be powerful or advanced languages and they are easy to learn. But Python claims to be an advanced language. Advanced and yet so slow????

Windows runs on Python. I am sad that the developers of Blender selected such an un-professional language which is both non standard, and unfriendly to a programmer. Do you expect an artist to be using PYTHON ? are you listening BLENDER MORONS ? You should have sticked to C++ (minus the MS shit .NET).

PHP is a great language and is so much friendly, need a a day of training to even the worst of morons to understand the Perl and C++ borrowed syntax.

Anyone who accuses perl if favor of PYTHON, you should get your facts straight. A languange for even a novice has to be forgiving, and yet remain graceful which PHP does generations ahead from any PYTHON ASS’s thoughts.

OOPS, My Foot, we never use it when not required. PERIOD. A simpe form submission does need a .NET component shit. it just needs 5 lines of code than struggling around Apache to get this Python shit requiring all ports open(AKA PLONE).

good luck guys, rant all from your hear against python, I love 3D Toools, but will never forgive the original coder who shose python as an API, he was surely insane or incapable on c++ or even PErl.

I have made a python program that generates Fractals (Wikipedia it) and writes them to a .png file, complete with colours. It took me an hour to make, with messing around.
Its cool, but a bit low rez (With 100×100 pixels it would be). So, I made it draw 1000×1000 pixels, but it was a bit slow. So I added threads workers from the Thread linked with the Queue module that took in x and y co-ordinates, ran some clever math functions and spat out a colour, then drew a pixel on that x,y co-ordinate. Its a bit faster, so I imported Psyco and .full()’ed it, which sped it up about 3 times.

The point? I couldnt have done any of that without Python docs.

At the interactive prompt you can type ? and it will spit out what the function does, along with many other cool tricks.

Python is not slower than php. It is the other way around.

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=python&lang2=php

Click there and you will see in almost all tests, php lags heavily behind python.

It is also faster than perl.

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=python&lang2=perl

And the worst benchmark all is a person just browsing the Web and listening to his “feeling”.

The *serious* benchmarks other people did show that — of course — Python has the same speed than PHP whithin the error span. Most even see an advantage for Python.

BTW, those Web framework benchmarks are really superfluous. Unless one framework is not one order of magnitude slower than the others — and none of the significant is — it’s simply unimportant. Look at the hype with Rails although it *is* slowest until we get the YARV in the upcoming Ruby release.

Also, Vim rules and EMACS drools.

Discuss. ;-)

Whenever somebody says Python is slow, Python fans would say that Python, being an interpreted language, will always be slower than compiled languages. Or they would say Python is fast enough

The PROBLEM is Python is slower than PHP.

Just go to any Python website and you will know.

An example is:
http://www2.ljworld.com/
And this site is created by the creators of Django!

And it is not just this Python site that is slow. There are many many Python sites which are very slow. And please don’t say that it could be the web hosting or the server which is slow — because when so many Python sites are slower than PHP sites, it couldn’t be the web hosting.

Also, Zope/Plone is even slower.

Python is slow. Very slow.

Sure, Python is definitely a more advanced and powerful language than PHP. But what’s the point if it is slow. And contrary to what Python fans like to say, Python is not an easy language to program in. And it is definitely not easier to write Python web applications as compared to PHP.

Python sucks. Python is slow.