I want to preface this and say, even though this is about Python (a language I dislike and spurred by the unexpected expressions on the documentary discussed) , it's also about how some things become huge and popular but are fundamentally inferior to so many alternatives. It has happened again and again across all aspects of technology, literature, everything. Humans are funny creatures. Untold billions of lines have been written about why language X or Y is bad. Python is probably the most prominent languages that has been subject to this debate, alongside JavaScript. They both exemplify how a series of factors propel something to massive popularity and widespread use despite being inferior, often across a large spectrum of criteria. They build a strange momentum in the face of requiring enormous amounts of time and money attempting to overcome the drag inherent in their deeply flawed foundations. People will go to great lengths to make a screwdriver a hammer, no matter how much resistance they experience. It's a wild mix of cult-like devotion and mass psychosis. I've made a 30 year career on software, built on the rise of the Internet. I started with Perl/CGI, then Java, PHP by way of some inherited stuff that was rewritten, C#, C, a brief time with Ruby, lots of JavaScript of course, and... Python. I consider myself lucky I never had to work with it a lot. It's a hideous language and it's problems have been flogged ad nauseam, so I will not waste another byte on what's already been said. So, why this post, right? I just finished watching on YouTube, The story of Python and How it Took over the World | Python: The Documentary. I was struck by the fact (yes, lol, fact) that the very creator of the language and all the people in it, many the most prominent and ardent Python supporters and developers of the community each made (assuredly unintentional except for a few that were very much intentional) strong cases for Python being an inferior language to so many others. The most obvious example was the Python 2.x to 3.x schism. Big name Python developers openly saying how awful 3.x was , how utterly miserable the transition. And then Guido van Rossum himself saying because of the struggle there will never be a Python 4. And even after that huge migration, the problems remain. As the documentary goes on, the subjects continue to make clear they are cheerfully going to pound that wrong square peg through that round hole with that aforementioned screw driver no matter the consequences. With each proposed change, people flipped out. I wonder why... Could it be... No, ALL these people can't have been wrong all this time?!... This is how bad things never go away. A weird inertia grows and more and more accretes to the mudball, and it keeps rolling along. Immeasurable human effort is expended to keep it going instead of better directions, because it's too much to turn away now. No matter how much it hurts, keep hitting yourself in the head. Eventually it'll get better, lol. So, yeah. I found it absolutely fascinating that a documentary that you'd think would show positive reasons for the success of something was really the greatest argument of how so many people, so many years of effort and human capital have been expended on something that never should have been more than a niche scripting language at best. And right to the end, the pure faith expressed is akin to religion. Wild. submitted by /u/ExquisiteOrifice [link] [comments]