I love Python, but it's a rubbish article I regret to have upvoted.<p>> Python is robust<p>This paragraph does not feature a word about robustness. There are mentions of speed and scalability and some sort of benchmark showing a case where Python is faster than Ruby or PHP. Conclusion: "It's also very fast".<p>The rest is less terrible but does not mention any of Python's shortcomings.
I made it as far as ".... Python is the language of choice for serious developers" before I bailed.<p>I love Python, but let's not make this a True Scotsman fallacy.
Please don't use the TIOBE index as a measure of language popularity. It's trash.<p>[Disclaimer: I love Python and if anything, it's more popular than TIOBE indicates. This comment expresses an opinion about TIOBE, not Python]
I use python because it is functional psuedocode. Before I learned python, my sketches for algorithms on whiteboards looked like python.<p>Also, the community practices for coding style are so strong in Python that I can open up nearly any piece of code on the internet and have no problems reading it no matter how junior or senior the person was who wrote it. This is a big win for maintainability and one of the main reasons why I prefer Python over Ruby or Perl.
It would be strange if this guy had anything negative to say about Python since "Should you need assistance with your Python project, we'll be happy to help through a variety of professional services."
One business metric that is worth considering is the cost of putting together a Python team vs., say, PHP. Here "cost" doesn't mean salaries as much as it means "cost function" or "difficulty score". Get away from Silicon Valley's reality distortion field and I think Python, today, might still have some issues in this regard.<p>I am not talking about finding one developer. I am talking about finding one, scaling to five and then beyond that.
The thing that keeps pulling me toward python is the ecosystem. NumPy, SciPy, Pandas, Mapnik, Cython, PyPy, IPython, Jython, Sage, PyQt/PyGTK, PyCuda/PyOpenCL. I rarely have trouble finding a tool that I need.<p>It is frustrating, because Ruby and Java are the standards where I work, and Clojure/Haskell are my favorite new toys. But I refuse to program in Java, and none of the others have ecosystems anywhere near as awesome as Python.
I can vouch for 'easy to learn': if you can already program in another language, learning Python is like being reintroduced to an old friend who has grown up quite a bit since you last met him.
And one of the best features of Python: The community<p>The Python community allied with the good programming habits (aka PEP 8) really does the difference.
I have been a PHP developer for more than 10 years. Since a couple of years Python has become my language of choice. I'm addicted to Python, every project I now start is in Python.<p>But I don't see any real valid reasons in the article to convince people. Do I have a valid reason? Probably not, every project has their own reason to use a specific language.<p>One valid reason to choose Python instead of PHP: Encoding. Never had any big problems in Python and a lot in PHP. Oh and multithreading.
You cannot write an article like this if you cannot first write an article on Python's warts<p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20070202012909/http://www.amk.ca/python/writing/warts.html" rel="nofollow">http://web.archive.org/web/20070202012909/http://www.amk.ca/...</a><p><a href="http://www.rittau.org/python/warts" rel="nofollow">http://www.rittau.org/python/warts</a><p>in fact I would love a warts wiki for frameworks, libraries and more. Python or not. Its important to have these debates out loud.
I once joined a project that had been going on for 5 years with >100K lines of Python. At any given time we had more than 25 programmers. In my two years on the project I never had a problem reading someone else's code - it was great for maintainability. Our project was used by hundreds of engineers on a critical path of a multi-billion dollar project. Anyone who thinks Python doesn't work for serious development doesn't know what they're talking about.
I just came here to praise python and hate on php, because that seems to be the popular thing to do. But I do like the idea of it being functional pseudocode, because my pseudocode usually starts approximating the syntax of the language, with progressively more erase marks and crossed statements due to getting a bracket wrong, or some other minor problem.<p>Note: Yes, I write source code on paper. Alot.
> Python is now one of the fastest-growing programing languages<p>I love Python but looking at the long term trends on TIOBE I am not sure I'd agree with the above statement <a href="http://www.tiobe.com/content/paperinfo/tpci/images/tpci_trends.png" rel="nofollow">http://www.tiobe.com/content/paperinfo/tpci/images/tpci_tren...</a>