Python certainly has some baggage, especially the typing system (which is still not finished, if you're looking at static typing and so is implemented differently by type checkers) and pip's safety, or lack thereof. But comparing it to PHP or Perl is rhetoric leading you one step too far.

It is 30+ years old with all the baggage you would expect. It’s very much a product of its time.

I felt the same way about moving to Python versus PHP and Perl.

I still really enjoy using python though. It's not really a fair comparison because I hadn't used PHP and Perl for as long but I just don't hit some mystifying issue every single session like I did with those languages when I'm using python. I honestly have never even read about that __debug__ constant. It's fun to hear about it but it's just not something that's comes up much.

I don't understand how people talk about how Python is "easy to learn for beginners" or "easy to understand." To me it's so hard to remember and follow all the weirdness. Racket / Scheme / I dare say even Haskell would just be so much simpler for learners.

I'm with Conal Elliot when he said on Type Theory for All that it is sooo much harder to understand a program in Python.

I feel the same way. It was, back then “the second best language for everything, the first best at nothing”

Can’t take credit for the quote, read it somewhere.

The whole language changed when they kicked what’s-his-name out, and it’s a tool I almost never reach for anymore, whereas 15 years ago it was my Swiss Army knife.

Who cares tho. The agents deal with all of that, if you’re still looking at the code or caring about anything other than the loops and orbs you’re at the wrong level of abstraction. The important thing is the models have tons of python in their training data.