@GDBringer thanks for posting the book!
@pegasusz I think their choice of the word “popular” may be a bit misleading there, since popular means “loved by the people.” What they clarify in the next paragraph is that JavaScript is the most commonly used language, and that Python is the fastest growing language. And if you scroll down to the Loved/Dreaded/Wanted section, 33.2% of JavaScript users want to stop using JavaScript (
) while Python doesn’t even make it onto the “dreaded” list.
After sleeping on it, I think another really important factor is that the Python community is just plain welcoming, both intentionally and incidentally (it values features that beginners also value). Programming in general has a long history of exclusion due to the high entry barrier. Many programming communities promote code obfuscation, obtuse tricks, and clever techniques that marginally improve performance. The Python community believes that maintaining human readability is fundamentally more important than squeezing extra performance out of the system, to the extent that a large fraction of the language’s enhancement proposals are actually style guides. The Python community is friendly to beginners and has a sense of fun that’s just lacking in other languages. I mean, the official Python documentation is chock full of Monty Python jokes. What other language makes it fun to read the documentation?
I’ll close out this post with a quote from the guiding principles for Python’s design:
The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters
Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren’t special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you’re Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than right now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it’s a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea – let’s do more of those!
XD