Submitted 3 weeks ago by QuinnyCoded@sh.itjust.works to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
also I just realized that Brazil did NOT make a programming language entirely in Spanish and call it “Si” and that my professor was making a joke about C
this post is probably too nieche but I feel like Lemmy is nerdy enough that enough people will get it lol
C is the old carpenter, who can drive in nails with three strikes of the hammer and never forgets his tools.
C# is his friend who just uses power tools instead. He is fine too. He goes home early whenever he can.
Python is the new guy at work who thinks he’s super smart. He actually can do the job really well, but for some reason nobody likes him all that much.
Javascript is the boss’s son who got the job since he agreed to stay off pills but he does not. He is useful to be friendly with, maybe, but avoid him any day that you can. Typescript is his weird fiancée. She is significantly less stupid but much more rarely useful, and also best avoided.
Go and Rust are tight-knit friends who get shit done. They are extremely capable but also not friendly, they tend not to talk much.
Clojure does mushrooms on weekends, and seems to believe he has key insights the rest of the crew is too dim to understand, but he also makes frequent simple mistakes on the job and forgets things. Also avoid.
Java only has the job because he’s known the boss since they were kids. He was never that good, but now he is old, and frequently drunk. Avoid at all costs.
COBOL handles the books because no one else can understand the system and it’s too much work to change after 40 years
C is the old carpenter with leaky memory with heavy undiagnosed autism, who constantly cracks demented jokes like “Missing } at end of file”.
He’s so mentally not there in fact, that if you don’t specifically tell him to return to you after finishing the job, he will neither figure out what he’s supposed to do, nor will he tell you what went wrong, but instead he will happily jump somewhere else, halucinate commands from the structure of the walls and start doing whatever the voices tell him to do.
In my analogy, the tool is the programming language, and the worker is the programmer in that language. Mostly.
Rust is that one rare type of guy who refuses to round measurements so you end up with “the drawer is 28.34646 inches tall.”
Nah java’s the super chatty guy who goes on and on and on and never aguts the hell up, making doing anything with him extra tedious
Python is from 1991. The only older language you listed was c.
Python is a millenial. He’s 34, is married and has two kids. But the old guys still think he’s 15.
Yeah and the new guy takes 3 days to finish the job that the old carpenter can do in 2hrs. And when he wants it done faster he quickly asks the old guy to do it for him. That’s why nobody else in the site likes him.
Great story, but why antropomorphize? Would tools not be a better analogy?
C is like having a box of nails, manual tools and some mortar. The Notre Dame was built like that.
C# is like having a box of screws and some power tools. Some tools are still manual. This is how your grandma’s house was built.
Java is similarily a mix of old and new, but you also have stuff like cement. That’s how new schools were built.
Python is like having a modern hardware store at your disposal. Big, clunky, and you need a stroll down the isles before you find what could work. Should I use this power tool I know or a new one more specific for the usecase? What are those little plastic screw sleeve thingies? This is how modern homes are built.
Javascript is like US power tools. When trying to switch to them you’ll question your sanity, but you can still get stuff done just as well. However, only power tools: Want to drive a nail into something? Gonna need a semiautomatic nailgun. Want to hit something hard? Can’t use a hammer, there’s a power tool for that. Oh, and your nails and screws are shapeshifting. This is how the Opera House was built.
Type script is like javascript, but you retain your organized nailbox. For some reason, not many things were built with it.
Go and rust are like metric, traditional tools with some screws. However, they’re labeled in chinese. In essence, it’s the same as your run-of-the-mill tools. It just takes some time to get to know them. This is how a hospital gets built in a week.
I’ve never done Clojure, so wouldn’t know.
This is a very apt description.
Lua is like using duct tape for everything. It worked to save the Appollo mission so it should work anywhere.
Visual Basic is like using the tools you found in a cardboard box when you cleared out the house when your uncle died. You’ll get random, super specialized things, but if one of these old tools breaks, you just have to continue with the remains.
Cobol is like using the toolshop at the Renaissance fair, only that the tools are original, not reproductions.
Brainfuck is the like your kid’s toy tool box. Yes, there’s something that kinda looks like a plastic hammer, but good luck using it for anything other than role playing.
To start with Brazil speaks Portuguese not Spanish
I’ll be honest, I think modern python is cool. You just need to accept that it has some limitations by design, but they mostly makes sense for its purpose.
It’s true that the type system is optional, but it gets more and more expressive with every version, it’s honestly quite cool. I wish Pylance were a bit smarter though, it sometimes fails to infer sum types in if-else statements.
After a couple large-ish personal projects I have concluded that the problem of python isn’t the language, but the users.
On the other hand, C’s design is barren. Sure, it works, it does the thing, it gives you very low level control. But there is nothing of note in the design, if not some quirks of the specifications. Being devoid of innovation is its strength and weakness.
As someone who studied C exclusively in school and used it for the majority of programming projects I had in the real world, coming to Python now is like moving from a kit car like a Caterham to a Mercedes S class.
Knowing nothing about code but a fair bit about cars, does that analogy mean like, you can play around with a kit car all you want because you built it, it’s relatively simple, and if you break it you’ll know why and how to fix it, and the Mercedes being the exact opposite?
C does one thing really well and that’s everything fast with complete control. Python is cool for people just trying to bang out some scripts or learning to program but interpreted languages have no place in mainstream software. Devices are starting to become slower than computers 30 years ago because there is so much garbage being included in apps written in interpreted java and Python and other nonsense. It’s not just bad for the user but it’s bad for the planet. It shouldn’t take a million times the energy to run a simple program because someone doesn’t know how to write Inca proper language. Python is okay in some things. The world has become too reliant on it though.
Uses less memory until it inevitably springs a memory leak.
I like many of your points, but your comment is facetious.
You said it yourself, “it’s good for someone trying to bang out scripts”… and that’s it, that’s the main point, that’s the purpose of python. I will argue over my dead body that python is a trillion times better than sh/bash/zsh/fish/bat/powershell/whatever for writing scripts in all aspects except availability and if that’s a concern, the only options are the old Unix shell and bat (even with powershell you never know if you are stuck ps 5 or can use ps 7).
I have a python script running 24/7 on a raspberry that listens on some mqtt topics and reacts accordingly asynchronously. It uses like 15kiB (literally less than 4 pages) of ram mostly for the interpreter, and it’s plenty responsive. It uses about two minutes of CPU time a day. I could have written it in rust or go, I know enough of both to do it, it would have been faster and more efficient, but it would have taken three times the time to write, and it would have been a bitch to modify, I could have done it in C and it would have been even worse. For that little extra efficiency it makes no sense.
You argue it has no place in mainstream software, but that’s not really a matter of python, more a matter of bad software engineers. Ok, cool that you recognise the issue, but I’d rather you went after the million people shipping a full browser in every GUI application, than to the guys wasting 10 kiB of your ram to run python. And even in that case, it’s not an issue of JavaScript, but an issue of bad practices.
P.S. “does one thing well” is a smokescreen to hide doing less stuff, you shouldn’t base your whole design philosophy on a quote from the 70s. That is the kind of shit SystemD hater shout, while running a display server that also manages input, opengl, a widget toolkit, remote desktop, and the entire printer stack. The more a high profile tool does, the less your janky glue code scripts need to do.
For us ludite lurkers who couldn’t figure it out from context alone, which one is the interpreted language? I got lost on that detail lol
I genuinely don’t get it.
That’s because it’s a stupid take. Believing brazil named a programming language after a Spanish word is pretty embarrassing too but I guess English speakers do that constantly.
'murica did send a president who made a toast to “the people of Bolivia”. During a dinner with the Brazilian president. In Brasilia. So, yeah, there’s precedent for their ignorance.
“The C programming language is like debating a philosopher and Python is like debating someone who ate an edible”
Here “edible” is a drug. it means Python is going in all and every directions like someone high on drugs.
I get that part. I just don’t understand how the analogy relates to the programming languages. Maybe it really is just a shitty analogy from someone who doesn’t know much about either language.
yep. this post is too nietzsche
I’ll hate on python (or any dynamically typed lang) as much as the next guy, but let’s not be language snobs
Why would you hate on it? It has its usecases. You won’t build an OS in Python, but I’d much rather do data processing in Python than in C
Maybe I’ll build an OS in Python just for the fun of it! Haha
I hate on it mainly for its lack of static typing.
I tried building a HomeAssistant add-on in python, and it was not a good experience. Idk what IDE python devs usually use but VSCode did not provide much assistance.
i didn’t say anything negative about it, I just made an observation (while high)
If you can eat it, then it’s edible.
Change my pythonic mind.
I try to avoid python for two main reasons. While coding, white spaces. Who thought that was a good idea? While using, shared dependancies, again who thought thay was a good idea? I have to use pipx or manually make a venv otherwise python scripts start breaking each other. May as well just package it with its own dependancies from the get go.
These uh…aren’t issues you need to think about much.
I literally have to think about dependancies every time i install a python script in Debian. It always says its externally managed and use pipx. Then its not in pipx so i have to make a venv. Any other language i download and compile and it only cares about dependancies at build time.
Those are issues I was forced to think about a lot…
Thats nit my problem with it. My problem is that it’s too dynamic, especially that I can’t have proper types
I always use uv for Python stuff these days
Who fucking cares use the tool you need.
Python is my “native” programming language, it’s the first I learned, and many of my leaps in understanding of the language have resulted from thinking “Wait, Python is a smart ass. I bet it can do…”
C is too cold. Python is too hot. What is just right?
Visual Basic.
Nim. Python-esque way to write, C speed
Python is 34 years old already. That means, someone who was already working as a programmer when Python came out would have to be about 54 years or older now.
I wonder why people still think it’s the hot new thing.
When Python came out, C was 19 years old. So Python is much older now than C was when Python came out.
I was thinking more along the line of Goldilocks and the three bears. What is the language that feels just right to you (given the obvious issues with C and Python)
Haskell
You know why functional programming languages don’t have side-effects?
Because nobody uses them.
If we’re continuing this analogy, did python or js take more drugs?
Don’t let Java try hallucinogens. It will get lost in the public static void.
Python’s on edibles. JS is on a cocktail of every psychedelic known to man and has been continuously since 1995.
also I just realized that Brazil did NOT make a programming language entirely in Spanish and call it “Si”
Imagine Python did this, and people would programming in Dutch!
What about philosophers who eat edibles?
C++?
now we are asking the real questions.
ICastFist@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Because we speak fucking portuguese
LiveLM@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Maybe if we start saying Americans speak Americanese they’ll finally get the memo
Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Probably would be even more effective to say they speak British.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I fear not so. To them everything outside of the USA is the same thing.
ICastFist@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
I suspect they might get proud of that, “we made english american!”
Donnywholovedbowling@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Also they did create LUA
Jerkface@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’ve met more than one that thinks you speak Mexican
ICastFist@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
I know, no wonder the perception that 'muricans don’t know geography is just as old
MassiveSquid@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Sim