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0 pointst8sr2y ago0 comments

Well, not to split hairs, but it depends on what you mean by complexity. I would describe Python as possibly the most complex programming language in existence - it’s built in terms of a high number of abstractions, many of which are leaky, and it behaves very differently from version to version and environment to environment.

Python is certainly very terse and expressive. I like writing Python, it’s fun. And it hides a lot of problems from the programmer, but that’s not the same as being simple.

Go is simple, that’s why it’s verbose. It has no syntax sugar and it’s not fun to write Go, but you can read it and see what it’s doing really quickly.

Anyway, it’s about picking the right set of trade-offs, as you say. But the trade off in performance is 1:100, and that’s so punishing at scale that all other considerations kind of fall by the wayside.

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bb882y ago

> I would describe Python as possibly the most complex programming language in existence.

You haven't lived until you've argued with a C++ language lawyer.

> Go is simple, that’s why it’s verbose. It has no syntax sugar and it’s not fun to write Go, but you can read it and see what it’s doing really quickly.

Python is great. It has a lot of syntax sugar, but it's also easy to read and understand what it's doing. They teach it to elementary school kids. But they use it in F500 companies. And it has made huge strides into the scientific computing, because it's relatively easy to call existing C/Fortran libraries.

Go's experience by comparison is awful. Their community is an anti-social gate-keeping echo chamber. Their FFI is awful. Their language design is awful as well.

Edited to add: I feel like Go got popular because Rob Pike had no problem bad mouthing other languages. "Python/C++ are so terrible...".

Consider Rust on the other hand, where python and Rust seems to be getting along quite well. Rust seems to care about the coding experience. I think that makes a difference.

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