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A comment on Python Is Eating the World. Parent comment

Re:Python Is Eating the World by p1esk on Monday August 12, 2019 @01:32PM (#20677732)
Right now I’m experimenting with a pretty complicated model (60+ layers of multiple types), and I plan to train it on several hundred GB of data, using 8-16 node cluster (4 GPUs per node). Does Owl have a well tested and well documented autograd library with distributed GPU support (e.g. Horovod)? With a good choice of optimizers, regularizers, normalizers, etc, so I can focus on my model and not on debugging the plumbing or implementing basic ops from scratch. And last, but not least, it must be as fast as TF/Pytorch.

If the answer is “no”, then it does not matter whether I’m an OCaml expert, because I’m still going be more productive with Python.

p.s. Julia is nice though, hopefully it will keep growing.

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Re:Python Is Eating the World by verttii on Monday August 12, 2019 @02:14PM (#20678231)
I feel what you're saying is that regardless of how subpar a language is compared to alternatives as long as it has community built specific libraries that solve your problems you're more productive using them than anything else.

Which is of course a fair point. A language by itself is probably not even in the top 3 considerations when choosing new tech. Stuff like runtime, ecosystem and the amount of available developers would probably be more important in most cases.

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Re:Python Is Eating the World by ernst_klim on Monday August 12, 2019 @03:37PM (#20679099)
> A language by itself is probably not even in the top 3 considerations when choosing new tech. Stuff like runtime, ecosystem and the amount of available developers would probably be more important in most cases.

Totally depends on a domain. In serious mission critical software you wont use libraries, but will use the language.

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Re:Python Is Eating the World by verttii on Monday August 12, 2019 @05:43PM (#20680350)
Yeah I don't disagree. But even there you would have similar other considerations besides the language. Like most still end up with C/C++ there even though there are others like Crystal, Nim, but you just don't find developers who know them easily, nor do you have any ecosystem support.
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Re:Python Is Eating the World by ernst_klim on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @03:15AM (#20683500)
> Like most still end up with C/C++ there even though there are others like Crystal, Nim,

Because C++ and C are significantly better than Nim and Crystal.

There are also Ada and Spark and aerospace and very critical stuff.

> just don't find developers who know them easily

We don't look for OCaml/Ada developers, we hire programmers, and they program OCaml and Ada. It's not a big deal for a good programmer to learn a language, especially while programming side by side with seasoned programmers.

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Re:Python Is Eating the World by p1esk on Monday August 12, 2019 @02:57PM (#20678661)
how subpar a language is compared to alternatives

In my 6 years with Python, the only dissatisfaction with the language I felt was from parallel programming. I switched to Python from C, and at the time, I missed C transparency and control over the machine, but that was compensated by the Python conciseness and convenience. Then I had to dig into C++ and I didn't like it at all. Then I played with CUDA and OpenMP, and Cilk+, but I wished all that would be natively available in a single, universal language. Then I started using Theano, then Tensorflow, and now I'm using Pytorch, and am more or less happy with it. It suits my needs well. If something else emerges with a clear advantage, I'll switch to it, but I'm not seeing it yet.

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