Why Python is more fun that Java

http://brizzled.clapper.org/id/75

by marketer • 18 years ago

25 29 18 years ago

brizzled.clapper.org

axod• 18 years ago

Sorry but I stopped reading here...

System.exit(0);

It's hardly going to be fair and balanced with things like that in it.

chrisbroadfoot3• 18 years ago

TRWTF is this:

  for (String s : args[0].split("\\s+"))
      System.out.println(s);

which is exactly the same as:

  System.out.println(args[0]);

(redacted)

jdale27• 18 years ago

  [jdale@localhost ~]$ java -cp . Test "foo bar baz"
  foo
  bar
  baz

paul2• 18 years ago

His StringBuffer example is also wrong (the java compiler would automatically use a StringBuffer in his example).

chrisbroadfoot3• 18 years ago

StringBuilder?

babul4• 18 years ago

Deja vu.

(http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=260014)

p.s. I thought a dupe post got credited to its predecessor. Is there a time limit on this check?

qqq• 18 years ago

the URL is different

babul4• 18 years ago

URL is same (http://brizzled.clapper.org/id/75).

Also, I have experienced this myself. Submitted an article and found it had been submitted ~1-2hr before/after by another (so usually would delete article I submitted).

globalrev• 18 years ago

I'd wish people stop post all crappy blogposts about shallow language-comparisons.

Saying language X does Y in 4 lines instead of language Zs 5 lines just doesn't say much unless you put it in a bigger perspective.

(And I like Python very much and hate Java).

atl2008• 18 years ago

So write something that gives that bigger perspective.

fauigerzigerk3• 18 years ago

That's true, and I also like Python more than Java. What's missing in these comparisons are some important architectural consequences of using Python (or ruby or PHP) for web apps. The one reason why I haven't been using Python as much as I like is the GIL (global interpreter lock).

The GIL requires that you use multiple processes to make use of multiple CPUs or cores. And that means you cannot keep much data in memory as it would be duplicated in each process. Some applications benefit a lot from keeping much of the data in memory most of the time, and if you have complex data structures (like graphs) memcached (or similar solutions) is no replacement as you have to rebuild those data structures on each access. Any solution that invalidates process relative adresses incurs a huge overhead in order to access that data.

I know the debate around threads and how problematic they are and how much better a multi process model scales. That's all very well, but threads are the only way to use multiple cores and access in memory data structures fast.

So using Python, for me, means having to write much of my application in C++ (or Java or C#) and access that backend process from the Python web frontend. This approach comes with a lot of complexity and it's a lot more work than using Java or C# in the first place.

On the other hand, keeping a lot of data in memory isn't necessary for most applications as the data structures and the parallelism lives in the DBMS, which is written in C/C++ anyway.

It's also questionable whether Java is a good solution for my scenario. Java and C# need about twice as much memory as C++ for the exact same data structures, and the garbage collector gets slower the more memory a process allocates.

I know there are more options but this post is getting lengthy :-)

anewaccountname• 18 years ago

If the data structures are static, you can build them, then fork off a bunch of python processes. They will all have the data, but it will only be in memory once. Just make sure to never invoke GC after that point... (unless python's GC isn't compacting). Also make sure to never reference anything, or you will increment it's reference count and trigger copy-on-write...

anthonyrubin• 18 years ago

PostgreSQL is not multi-threaded and uses System V IPC. Threads are certainly not the only option.

waldrews• 18 years ago

It's a little surprising how many of the Python-favoring features are already present in C# 3.0; closures, syntactically clean properties, and a nicer array syntax; between the yield keyword and LINQ, you get something close to generator syntax; reflection is pretty painless; and while there's no dynamic typing, there's a convenient type inference mechanism.

My personal pet peeve against Java is the lack of multiline string literals, also available in both Python and C#.

Java has some syntactic catching up to do.

gojomo• 18 years ago

I share your peeve. A request for multiline string literals is over 7 years old...

http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4472509

Reading the Sun bug database, it's clear who's held back Java's functionality and stability over the years: xxxxx@xxxxx, who on this issue back in 2001 wrote "This is yet another request for a syntactic sugar to save some user from typing. It's not worth it."

I hope for the good of the platform xxxxx has been let go since then.

michaelneale3• 18 years ago

Agreed. If I ever find xxxxx@xxxxx in a dark alley, he/she better watch out.

michaelneale3• 18 years ago

Not just string literals - but a better literal syntax for maps and arrays would be really nice.

michaelneale3• 18 years ago

Interesting article on how to kinda sorta do it using varags, generics and static imports (looks more like scala): http://gleichmann.wordpress.com/2008/01/13/building-your-own...

13ren• 18 years ago

multiline string literals... also available in C (using \).

duane• 18 years ago

What, no decorators mentioned?

Why Python is more fun that Java

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