Why I never fell in love with Python

Sunday, November 1, 2009, 11:07 PM
Thoughts by John (Article #248)

There is one immutable rule in the world of programming: if a programming language becomes an unquestioned religion, it probably isn't worth learning.

Think about that for a second. C++ and C have always been highly criticized, despite their status as gatekeepers to the upper echelon of programming. PHP has pretty much swallowed the internet whole, while also allowing some of the most insecure code every written to be spread everywhere. Visual BASIC . . . well, hell . . . anything BASIC has been frowned up since DOS ceased to be the stuff.

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Python is supposed to the perfect language.

But, it's not.

First off, Python lacks a core constituency. The core Python user seems to be folks too smart for PHP, too cool for Visual BASIC and way too with it to clunk around with C++.

Think that through. PHP is for web apps -- especially if mixed with MySQL and JavaScript by a reasonably responsible programmer aware of SQL injection. Visual BASIC is for building every quick and dirty app for Windows. And C++ is for building all the stuff that runs, well, everything else -- OSes, compilers, interpreters -- we wouldn't even have PHP and VB if it weren't for C++. And we wouldn't have C++ if it weren't for C.

Python seems to exist in the margins. When you need to access a small portion of scriptable code in an app and you don't want to constantly recompile it. That's cute, but it's not the basis of a language you can really use everywhere.

My main problem with my encounters with Python is that it doesn't work consistently enough with MySQL to be useful. Python is not naturally married to a database like PHP is. And it isn't promiscuous in accessing DBs the way Visual BASIC is. For what I do, that breaks the deal. Python has to go.

Also, Python's community seems oblivious to improving its performance and stability with the most broadly used databases. You can't pimp a language in the year 2009 if it doesn't go all PB&J with at least one major database. LAMP stack is what it is because Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP are inseparable. We'd lost a huge chunk of the internet without anyone of those four.

Python just hasn't found that core constituency. And, frankly, I don't see that ever happening. Python worshippers extol its virtues so much that they don't see its flaws.

Maybe Python is a brilliant language. But, for what?

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Thank you,
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