Why Reddit uses Python

http://brainsik.theory.org/.:./2009/why-reddit-uses-python

by kqr2 • 17 years ago

74 34 17 years ago

brainsik.theory.org

TweedHeads• 17 years ago

"It's extremely expressive, extremely readable, and extremely writable. And that just keeps life smooth."

Something hardcore lispers don't fully understand.

mhb• 17 years ago

If they don't understand something, I'd say it's having the libraries, but I think they understand that.

neilc• 17 years ago

They don't understand why "expressive, readable, writable" code is a good thing? I doubt that very much. I think their definition of those terms just differs from yours.

njharman2• 17 years ago

"their definition of those terms just differs from yours."

That is what most people don't understand.

There is a best language. It just varies from programmer to programmer. Also picking the "right" language for the job is overrated. Should pick the "right" language for the developer(or switched around pick devs who's right language is the one your code base is written in.)

jrockway• 17 years ago

Lisp is also expressive, readable, and writable.

Honestly, Python claims to sacrifice expressiveness and writibility for readability. That whole "there's only one way to do things" is the opposite of expressiveness.

If you want to optimize for writibility and expressiveness, you want a language that won't prevent you from doing anything you want to do. Lisp is definitely one of these languages.

Anyway, your comment reads of blatant fanboi-ing. If you like Python, that's great, just say that instead. It's much better than inventing bullshit "reasons".

dave_au2• 17 years ago

Not taking sides here, just bringing up a potential counterpoint. I like Python, Lisp and a fair few other languages as well.

From my understanding, the "there's only one way to do things" idea generally applies at the smaller scales, so an argument could be made that it helps with expressiveness at larger scales, since once you know the idioms you don't need to choose between them - ie you can just type it in and keep going and save the mindspace that making a choice between the multiple equivalent options would have required.

Of course, that only makes sense if the "one way to do things" is eliminating choices that are 100% functionally identical, and you can also get bitten if you need something just outside of what the idiom can do nicely, but I thought it was a point worth bringing up.

xenophanes• 17 years ago

Huh? Lisp is very expressive, readable, and writable.

c00p3r• 17 years ago

There is a second reason - availability of reusable modules and it is that matters.

mshafrir• 17 years ago

I moved to Python recently to be able to take advantage of Google App Engine. I love the language and syntax for the reasons mentioned.

febeling3• 17 years ago

Sorry, this is not exactly thought-provoking. Why did you all vote up? It boils down to "I have my employees write software in the language I know to be able to control them better." That's not a far-fetched wish for a company owner, but hardly a good reason to choose a language if you expect the language to have a certain impact by itself.

icey• 17 years ago

How does Python help anyone control anyone else better? Especially versus something like Java or C# where you can just replace cogs and not have to train them when you bring on new staff.

moe• 17 years ago

Partly because you'll hardly find a python environment where developers are treated like interchangable cogs with a need for constant supervision ("control").

It's more a mindset thing than a language thing - and your vocabulary exposed it better than any second hand description could have done.

febeling3• 17 years ago

You can judge better and act accordingly if you now Python very well. That way Steve can control better using Python. Is external to the language, that's why I didn't find their reasoning that interesting, because it is Java or C# for somebody else. It is Steve-centric and not programming language-centric thinking.

tvon• 17 years ago

> "I have my employees write software in the language I know to be able to control them better."

You're completely misinterpreting what he is saying.

febeling3• 17 years ago

Well, he did say:

"I don’t think we’ve yet hired an employee who knew Python. I just say, “everything you write needs to be in Python.” Just so I can read it. And it’s awesome because I can see from across the room, looking at their screen, whether their code is good or bad. Because good Python code has a very obvious structure. And that makes my life so much easier."

Which boils down to: I make them use python to be able to control them better. It is legitimate for a boss to do that, he pays you after all. But it's hardly groundbreaking new management style or a good criterion for choosing a language.

I also can see why you are sympathetic to this. I know the good feeling when you know the language so well that you can see across a room from the shape on the screen wether it is good code or bad code. I love that myself.

JabavuAdams2• 17 years ago

> And it’s awesome because I can see from across the room, looking at their screen, whether their code is good or bad

Please tell me this is a joke. He may be able to tell whether the code is unreadably bad, but that's about all.

mitchellh• 17 years ago

In the actually pycon video, he does clear this up and say that he can tell if code is not correct because python programs all look very similar in terms of structure (short lines, small units, etc.) and due to python's required tabbing, its easy to see from his desk whether or not a programmer is following these methodologies.

silentbicycle3• 17 years ago

This is actually true of Lisp and Scheme too, though, since nearly everybody indents their code the same way (how Emacs does it). Code with lots of small functions, long and relatively flat imperative code blocks, etc. has very distinctive shapes.

Come to think of it, that's true for most languages that don't have Java-style static typing annotations interspersed throughout. Functional and imperative code in OCaml or Lua code look noticeably different, too, and there's not a whole lot of stylistic overlap between OCaml, Scheme, and Python's syntaxes. (Lua's is relatively similar to Python's.)

JabavuAdams2• 17 years ago

I've noticed in myself and other programmers an unconscious assumption that serious errors have serious symptoms. E.g. we must have fixed all the serious defects by now, because there's nothing obviously wrong with the code.

I've seen this proved wrong time and time again. Have you ever been maintaining some shipped code, and found a crash bug, where you're like: "I can't believe this shipped and we haven't heard about it."

So, I'm probably treating this out-of-context comment more seriously than it deserves, but I like to emphasize the point. Even though there is a set of errors that are detectable from the shape of the source code, there is a much larger set of serious errors that are not.

zitterbewegung2• 17 years ago

No offense but this blogpost is pretty much fluff. All it is is a blatant transcript of the video. I was on the A/V team to help record this. Everyone is better off just watching the video.

patio11• 17 years ago

Can I encourage you in the future to provide transcript or a best of yourself? I read a lot faster than any sane person talks, I can read on my cellphone while packed in a wall to wall train full of salarymen, and I can read at the office to my heart's content whereas watching video is widely considered not-work-related.

Incidentally: getting me to key points of the talk without requiring 26 minutes of watching low-information-density video is a value-add for me.

zitterbewegung2• 17 years ago

If I talk to the guys at pycon we might be able to do a transcript if we had another volunteer. I was thinking about doing this after I read this fluff piece.

derefr• 17 years ago

> Everyone is better off just watching the video.

If they actually want to watch the video. I skim articles. I can't skim a video.

eru3• 17 years ago

We should employ mturkers to transcribe videos. If only ten people pay like 5 cent for it, it should be viable given the low pay of mturkers. (Perhaps the content provider could also do this, as he profits from advertising and the transactions/coordination costs are much lower for this centralised solution.)

Why Reddit uses Python

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