Python is the second best language for everything. Having one language that does it all is better than learning several that might do it a little bit better.
JavaScript is very much not the second best language for anything.
JavaScript came about because it was the only choice in the context for which it was designed, and then it metasticized into other contexts because devs that used it got Stockholm syndrome.
Speed is a serious problem in Python though. Python has its use cases, and so do other languages. Things would not end well if we started using Python for everything.
If I wanted to write a 3D game engine, I wouldn’t use Python either. But there’s zero chance of me ever doing that. For 90% of things 90% of people do, Python works just fine. And the performance thing is actively being worked on and getting better all the time.
Python is the best “glue” language I’ve ever used. When you want to chain together your program’s high-level logic and all of the loops happen inside lower-level languages like Rust, Go, Zig, D or C, Python’s performance is perfectly adequate and it’s so clear and concise it reads like pseudocode.
Python is secretly a functional-paradigm language. If you’re not making liberal use of comprehensions instead of loops (especially loops with LBYL conditions in them), you’re doing it wrong.
I can’t think of a single reason to use bash over Python. Anything you can do in bash can be done in pure Python. Unless you’re working in some embedded environment it’s a non-issue to install a Python interpreter (you certainly already have one). I would only use sh/bash for packages I’m distributing to avoid the external dependency, and then only if it’s a relatively simple script.
Because you could be on another machine that doesn’t have Python 3.X it only has 3.X-1. or you could write code for Python 3.12 and then four years later no one has 3.12 anymore.
Sometimes you need to download packages from pip but pip might not be available or you may be hitting your company’s internal pip mirror.
How often are you writing scripts that accidentally require a specific minor version of Python 3 to run? If you have dependencies, 1) you’re no longer scripting, and 2) you need to manage your runtime environment anyway.
Runtime environments can change often, if you need to install your application on a ton of PC’s you don’t want to install python version 3.X on all of those instead you could just compile it into a native binary, pip is the most unsafe hell
Python is superior for string anything (parsing, searching, manipulating). But Bash is much simpler for running existing CLI tools. Plus you should already be using Bash as a simple terminal language already, so wrapping what you’re used to into a simple script flows naturally.
Eg, if I have some admin tool for updating a user thingamajig, a common scripting need is just running that tool for every user in a file (or the output of another command). The string manipulation that often requires is annoying in bash, but running the commands is easier than Python.
If what you’re doing is essentially a few shell commands, then you may as well put it into a script. If you’re talking about how “elegant” your shell scripts are and comparing them to Python, you’re probably wrong and should be using Python.
I know there’s a lot of downvotes because there are people reading this as hate toward Python. On one hand, one can make the case that it is overused and this doesn’t bold well for those that simply can never like it’s syntax. On the other hand, Python is perfect for small scripts that isn’t tailored for a Domain or just quick codes.
Honestly, I’m not really a fan of the formatting and syntax of Python but I agree, it is a fine choice for scripting things quickly if you don’t mind the language itself.
The biggest issue I have with it are all the incompatible versions, juggling modules, having some other random thing with a ridiculous configuration, where a bash script would be infinitely easier. Anything more complicated and Python is just too much of a headache.
Ha, yeah that’s one I remember using. I believe there were other implementations of interpreting javascript on the server. LiveWire, maybe? It’s been so long since I even attempted it, honestly. I will say, nodejs is clearly far superior to them all, especially with how lean a nodejs service runs on the server.
MFW I'm using sh variant #7923 and trying to write a for loop.
On that other site, I compared it to being a lifelong English-speaking resident of Chicago and being unable to order a pizza in Indianapolis without a phrasebook.
That’s how polkit used to work. It was changed, presumably because the old system was excessively complex and inflexible. Arbitrary code is the correct solution when the set of potentially needed behaviors is unbounded, which in this case it is.
Another example of this is CSS. The vast majority of its features today—shadow effects, filter effects, animations, layout modes, even text colors—could have been implemented with WebAssembly and shaders. Instead, all of this stuff is implemented by the browser, and as a result, there are only three browser engines, two of them are on life support, and there is zero hope of meaningful competition among browsers ever arising again.
Let’s not overcomplicate polkit, please. It’s more than enough of an attack surface already.
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