I’ve used python for a while but mainly for small scripts. I’m often googling answers. (Is it myvar.len() or len(myvar) or myvar.__len__.?) do I use conda or pip or... 2.7 or 3.?. Oddly I’ll use books for other languages (Perl/JavaScript).
It’s a fine language and easy to get running but it seems harder to memorize things in it vs others (if I was 100% of my time using it, it probably would easier).
> ...it seems harder to memorize things in it vs others
This x10. I love Python, and use it for small scripts when I get the chance (just used it to test some probabilities last night even), but it seems like I constantly have to look things up all the time in it and can't seem to remember even common, basic syntax in it, despite having used it quite a bit. I really don't know why. I can leave and come back to other languages and not have anywhere near as much difficulty.
Interesting - I had the complete opposite experience: Python was the first language I'd tried in a long time that just worked as I'd expected it to. After understanding the initial indenting rules, most of the code I tried could be written as pseudocode, which surprisingly worked the first time.
I was really impressed, most languages have so many stupid syntax requirements, which really shouldn't be be needed these days - everything compiles to the same assembler code so lets not pretend these languages are doing magical things.
The goal should be for programmers to get the logic across to the computer in the simplest form - and Python is pretty good for that (apart from zfil - seriously, can you get any more unintuitive)
> everything compiles to the same assembler code so lets not pretend these languages are doing magical things.
Nope. Some languages get compiled into binaries that are more performant with a smaller footprint. Some have a runtime that provides features like garbage collection and runtime evaluation. Others let you define macros that run at compile time, extending the syntax of the language. Some are graphical live environments. Others offer full high-level concurrency.
Languages have different syntaxes to support the features that their interpreters or compilers can convert into the code that can run on the target environment. This is not going to be the same across all languages, and there are tradeoffs.
For a language that sets out its principles so clearly its amazing the hostile outcomes that have resulted.
For example, unlike every other language there is no "unique" function that operates on streams /iterators. Why is that? Because you can do that by creating a set(...) and Pythonistas think there should be only one and one good way to do something. So now nobody ever knows the answer to this and 100% of people learn it by googling and finding the answer on stack overflow.
It doesn't help that nearly everything is untyped and consequently IDE completion is all but useless.
It's not actually. You never call dunder methods directly, you use them through the built-in function or operator. So it can be neither myvar.len() nor myvar.__len__
It’s a fine language and easy to get running but it seems harder to memorize things in it vs others (if I was 100% of my time using it, it probably would easier).