Re:Controversial Programming Opinions (2012)
by mhh__ on Saturday December 05, 2020 @03:18AM
(#25312797)
Python teaches people that Python is a good way to do software.
The indentation is nice, but the language is not much more high-level than C, teaches bad habits by not thinking in types and granular interfaces, and encourages a counterproductive style of defensive programming - i.e. C++ is an awful language, but at least I can encode basic information about my code in the type system. Python trades that away so I have to write tests for the entire surface area - inside and out - of my code.
If there is something fundamentally wrong with my code, tell me now, not when it's half way through a job or worse attached to spending money.
You can write bad code in any language, but bad languages influence the way you think about programming. For example, C++ encourages you to think about side-effects in the language like SFINAE, D encourages you to metaprogram everything, Rust encourages you to think like a compiler (lifetimes), Haskell teaches you how to manage stateful code in a controlled and measured manner, etc. etc.
In conclusion, Python is not a terrible place to start (JS takes that award to my eye), but the progression to writing genuinely reliable and fast code is too obfuscated. I'd rather we teach people C. C requires a helping hand, you can fumble around with Python.
The indentation is nice, but the language is not much more high-level than C, teaches bad habits by not thinking in types and granular interfaces, and encourages a counterproductive style of defensive programming - i.e. C++ is an awful language, but at least I can encode basic information about my code in the type system. Python trades that away so I have to write tests for the entire surface area - inside and out - of my code.
If there is something fundamentally wrong with my code, tell me now, not when it's half way through a job or worse attached to spending money.
You can write bad code in any language, but bad languages influence the way you think about programming. For example, C++ encourages you to think about side-effects in the language like SFINAE, D encourages you to metaprogram everything, Rust encourages you to think like a compiler (lifetimes), Haskell teaches you how to manage stateful code in a controlled and measured manner, etc. etc.
In conclusion, Python is not a terrible place to start (JS takes that award to my eye), but the progression to writing genuinely reliable and fast code is too obfuscated. I'd rather we teach people C. C requires a helping hand, you can fumble around with Python.