js or python

ajskateboarder

AHypnoman wrote:
ajskateboarder wrote:
Oh by the way, JavaScript also acts the same way
...
Java and JS are entirely distinct. One is used on nearly every website and the other can be found at archaeological sites.

I'm including a Java sample here because both Java and Python make strings an immutable type, not because JavaScript and Java are supposedly similar (with the exception of standard libraries like Math looking practically the same)

The difference is that in JS primitives are all immutable, and, unless specified when creating one (excluding Web APIs, as they aren't a core part of JS), objects are mutable.

Yes. This is also true for Python as well. Any hashable built-in object like a str, int, float are immutable and can't be modified through a function parameter, while mutable containers (which can't be hashed) like dict and list can be

The reason for such behaviour is irrelevant (although I doubt this is for speed - doing this means that Python will need to utilise more memory to store a new reference which is almost certainly a slow process).

I was moreso thinking of optimization as in avoiding excess memory allocation, not speed (even then this is a strange decision, considering the amount of memory in the everyday system). Anyways

There are a few reasons you'd want to compare memory locations (such as manual memory management if you have limited resources), although my main problem with it is the inconsistency in behaviour - not lack of capability.

Notice I said comparing the memory locations of constant equivalent strings. What is this inconsistent with, really? Also, meticulous memory management can be much better done through C and Cython. Python isn't quite good with controlled memory management

Last edited by ajskateboarder (April 4, 2024 16:49:22)

AHypnoman

ajskateboarder wrote:
Yes. This is also true for Python as well. Any hashable built-in object like a str, int, float are immutable and can't be modified through a function parameter, while mutable containers (which can't be hashed) like dict and list can be

My point was that in JS default mutability/immutability correlates to being an object or primitive, whilst in Python there is no such correlation.

ajskateboarder wrote:
Notice I said comparing the memory locations of constant equivalent strings. What is this inconsistent with, really?

(You did not specify that they were constants in your original post). The inconsistency I refer to is the differing mutability between types of object - strings and lists, for example, are both objects. List are mutable, while strings are immutable. Primitives are inherently immutable, so it makes sense that they are immutable in JS. Reference variables on the other hand are inherently mutable, so it makes sense that they are by default in a language (They are plenty of reasons a program may want to change their mutability, but defaults should be mutable since they are internally). In Python, everything is an object+reference and some objects are immutable. There is no reason to have this behaviour, especially since it introduces inconistencies.

This behaviour isn't uncommon in programming languages, although that certainly doesn't make it any better.

ajskateboarder wrote:
Also, meticulous memory management can be much better done through C and Cython. Python isn't quite good with controlled memory management

Whether Python is best suited to it or not, it must be a consideration. Most AI software is written in Python now and memory management is incredibly important to that (granted, anyone writing AI in Python chose the wrong language for the job: languages like C and Rust are far faster and better for memory management so are better suited for AI).

I don't mean to say JS is a perfect language, or that Python is a particularly bad one. I'm just providing reasoning for my preference.

(JS has weird inconsistencies too, e.g. parseFloat is a top-level function while .toString is on prototype?? IK there's String, but that can be weird).

Last edited by AHypnoman (April 4, 2024 17:58:02)

ajskateboarder

AHypnoman wrote:
The inconsistency I refer to is the differing mutability between types of object - strings and lists, for example, are both objects. List are mutable, while strings are immutable. Primitives are inherently immutable, so it makes sense that they are immutable in JS. Reference variables on the other hand are inherently mutable, so it makes sense that they are by default in a language (They are plenty of reasons a program may want to change their mutability, but defaults should be mutable since they are internally). In Python, everything is an object+reference and some objects are immutable. There is no reason to have this behaviour, especially since it introduces inconistencies.

This behaviour isn't uncommon in programming languages, although that certainly doesn't make it any better.

Great point, it might be consistent with other languages, but it's not consistent itself. It's just like Java exceptions, they are popular in other languages but somehow act as some escape hatch for control-flow (Result enums > go if err != nil > exceptions). Seems like all the bad programming concepts stem from Java

I don't mean to say JS is a perfect language, or that Python is a particularly bad one. I'm just providing reasoning for my preference.

Of course

ajskateboarder wrote:
Also, meticulous memory management can be much better done through C and Cython. Python isn't quite good with controlled memory management
Whether Python is best suited to it or not, it must be a consideration. Most AI software is written in Python now and memory management is incredibly important to that (granted, anyone writing AI in Python chose the wrong language for the job: languages like C and Rust are far faster and better for memory management so are better suited for AI).

A lot of ML libraries like TensorFlow or PyTorch (as well as numpy and scipy for statistical calculations) are primarily written with C++ and Cython, so a lot of overhead just disappears. C and Rust aren't exactly the best languages to teach data scientists/engineers due to:

- how specialized their role is anyways
- how much of the ML ecosystem already uses Python
- Python being good for rapid development, which is primarily what data science involves (source: see the amount of jupyter notebooks that people make)

That being said, Rust does have a TensorFlow binding

JavaScript also has a port of TensorFlow, but configuring web workers to load 500mb chunks of model checkpoints into the browser is a headache, and the Node API is just… weird

API design is just kind of strange with Node. It's super fragmented, and only the most updated of libraries will work, even though Node has been supposedly stable for years now. There's also like 4 competing package managers (which mostly will not cooperate with each other) and a couple of alternative runtimes (most of which thankfully aren't being pervasively adopted)

Last edited by ajskateboarder (April 4, 2024 19:45:24)

AHypnoman

ajskateboarder wrote:
A lot of ML libraries like TensorFlow or PyTorch (as well as numpy and scipy for statistical calculations) are primarily written with C++ and Cython, so a lot of overhead just disappears. C and Rust aren't exactly the best languages to teach data scientists/engineers due to:

- how specialized their role is anyways
- how much of the ML ecosystem already uses Python
- Python being good for rapid development, which is primarily what data science involves (source: see the amount of jupyter notebooks that people make)

That being said, Rust does have a TensorFlow binding

JavaScript also has a port of TensorFlow, but configuring web workers to load 500mb chunks of model checkpoints into the browser is a headache, and the Node API is just… weird

Yes - that's something I did't consider. Given the existent support for AI that Python has, it's probably best for AI at this point. I was referencing the speed benefits and requirements rather than infrastructure and syntactic suitability (which admittedly I overlooked entirely).

ajskateboarder wrote:
API design is just kind of strange with Node. It's super fragmented, and only the most updated of libraries will work, even though Node has been supposedly stable for years now. There's also like 4 competing package managers (which mostly will not cooperate with each other) and a couple of alternative runtimes (most of which thankfully aren't being pervasively adopted)

Getting Node working can be a pain, although I rarely encounter problems with packages breaking - aside from a small few I've never really had a problem installing older and unmaintained packages. There are a handful of package managers although NPM is by far the most used and has far more content than PNPM, Yarn, etc. Python does have some alternatives to PIP like Anaconda, although AFAIK they aren't nearly big enough to be a real competitor.

As for alternative runtimes - I agree entirely. It would be far better to have one universally agreed-upon runtime. Some runtimes do have huge advantages over others, granted (e.g. Bun using internal multithreading to run far faster than Node and having a centrally distributed package manager), but decentralisation means that despite many programmes being written in the same language they are entirely incompatible with one another.

Last edited by AHypnoman (April 4, 2024 21:21:45)

BigNate469

AHypnoman wrote:
ajskateboarder wrote:
A lot of ML libraries like TensorFlow or PyTorch (as well as numpy and scipy for statistical calculations) are primarily written with C++ and Cython, so a lot of overhead just disappears. C and Rust aren't exactly the best languages to teach data scientists/engineers due to:

- how specialized their role is anyways
- how much of the ML ecosystem already uses Python
- Python being good for rapid development, which is primarily what data science involves (source: see the amount of jupyter notebooks that people make)

That being said, Rust does have a TensorFlow binding

JavaScript also has a port of TensorFlow, but configuring web workers to load 500mb chunks of model checkpoints into the browser is a headache, and the Node API is just… weird
Yes - that's something I did't consider. Given the existent support for AI that Python has, it's probably best for AI at this point. I was referencing the speed benefits and requirements rather than infrastructure and syntactic suitability (which admittedly I overlooked entirely).
…

You do have to keep in mind that newer processors have cores specifically designed to run (or, at least speed up) AI, so whatever language works best for those processors can greatly improve performance on them, even if Python has more support in general.

ajskateboarder

A little pet peeve that is sort of confusing me:

function a(callback) {
  callback();
  return 12
}
let b = a(() => (b = 13));
console.log(b);
// index.js:5
// let a = thing(() => {a = 11})
//                        ^
// ReferenceError: Cannot access 'a' before initialization

But this does work

function a(callback) {
  setTimeout(callback, 0.001); // timeout ms is arbitrary, setting anything will make it work
  return 12
}
let b = a(() => (b = 13));
console.log(b);
// 12
// this means the variable set happened in the callback

Here's basically the code that is causing the same confusion

/** @type {HTMLButtonElement} /*
let button = Button({
  // will this error or not??
  onmouseover: () => {
    button.style.scale = "0.9";
  },
});

I'm guessing it won't since I assign the handler to the element before placing it in the DOM, but yeah ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ajskateboarder

// destructuring without an array?
var thing = (1, 2, 44, "a");
console.log(thing) // "a"
 
var thing, _, __, ___ = (1, 2, 44, "a");
// expects to print 1
console.log(thing); // undefined
 
var (thing, _, __, ___) = (1, 2, 44, "a"); // ReferenceError: let is not defined

Is there any use for wrapping items in parentheses if it doesn't really do anything useful, or is this just some odd syntax artifact?

mybearworld

I don't really understand your question, so I'll just explain what's going on in these lines of code

// JS has the comma operator. This takes in two values and discards the first one, only returning
// the second one. So:
console.log((1, 2) === 2) // true
 
// Here, (1, 2, 44, "a") gets evaluated to "a", because the comma operators discard everything
// to the left. thing gets set to that value.
var thing = (1, 2, 44, "a");
console.log(thing) // "a"
 
// JS allows multiple variable declarations in a single statement. If you run this line through a
// formatter, you'll get:
// var thing,
//   _,
//   __,
//   ___ = (1, 2, 44, "a");
// So, this declares "thing", "_" and "__" without assigning them a value (so they default to
// undefined), and ___ as "a".
var thing, _, __, ___ = (1, 2, 44, "a");
console.log(thing); // undefined
 
// The parentheses would make the code look incorrect here, so they're not allowed.
var (thing, _, __, ___) = (1, 2, 44, "a"); // Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token '('

julmik6478

Python is lot easier. Look at this python code:

print(“Hello World”)

And now look at same, but in javascript:

console.log('Hello World');

Ok, this one is easy in javascript too, but more advanced things are easier in python and in python you don't need to add “;” at the end.

robotkid828

python and js each have their own niche, but the very fact that they allow you to do this confuses me:

//javascript
([]+![])[![]+![]]
'f'

#python (at least this requires effort to do)
((f"{[]in[not[]]}"[[]or not[]])+(f"{[]in[not[]]}"))[[]or not[]]
'F'
#OR
f"{[]in[]}"[[]in[[[]]]]
'F'

(though in my very unbiased opinion python will always be superior)

Last edited by robotkid828 (May 20, 2024 15:41:18)

BigNate469

julmik6478 wrote:
Python is lot easier. Look at this python code:
print(“Hello World”)
And now look at same, but in javascript:
console.log('Hello World');
Ok, this one is easy in javascript too, but more advanced things are easier in python and in python you don't need to add “;” at the end.

Technically speaking, in newer versions of (See post #598) JS you don't need to add the semicolon either, just a line break.

console.log('Hello World')

works the same as

console.log('Hello World');

That being said, adding the semicolon makes the code slightly more reliable.
Tip: use the [code] and [/code] tags to insert code into the forums. To specify automatic coloring based on programing language, use [code=insertlanguagenamehere][/code]
The language name must be in all lowercase.

Last edited by BigNate469 (May 21, 2024 20:10:24)

mybearworld

BigNate469 wrote:
(#594)
Technically speaking, in newer versions of JS you don't need to add the semicolon either, just a line break.

Is that newer? I thought ASI has existed since pretty early on.

BigNate469

mybearworld wrote:
BigNate469 wrote:
(#594)
Technically speaking, in newer versions of JS you don't need to add the semicolon either, just a line break.
Is that newer? I thought ASI has existed since pretty early on.

I thought it was newer (I consider “newer” versions of JS as ES5 and up, since a small fraction of people still use Internet Explorer), but I might be wrong. MDN isn't giving me an answer, nor is the internet (or even the standard itself), so you could be correct.

Regardless, JS seems to still work better with the semicolons than without.

alwayspaytaxes

In terms of style guides and formatting, Python undoubtedly wins. Using Black + Pylint helps format your code for basically all aspects, even how much line spacing should go between functions! ESLint is a nightmare to setup, its VSCode plugin barely works with TypeScript, and while Prettier is nice, it's just not opinionated enough for me.

Last edited by alwayspaytaxes (May 20, 2024 20:35:48)

Maximouse

BigNate469 wrote:
mybearworld wrote:
Is that newer? I thought ASI has existed since pretty early on.
I thought it was newer (I consider “newer” versions of JS as ES5 and up, since a small fraction of people still use Internet Explorer), but I might be wrong. MDN isn't giving me an answer, nor is the internet (or even the standard itself), so you could be correct.

The first version of the ECMAScript standard from 1997 already mentions automatic semicolon insertion:

mybearworld

alwayspaytaxes wrote:
(#597)
In terms of style guides and formatting, Python undoubtedly wins. Using Black + Pylint helps format your code for basically all aspects, even how much line spacing should go between functions! ESLint is a nightmare to setup, its VSCode plugin barely works with TypeScript, and while Prettier is nice, it's just not opinionated enough for me.

Can you give an example of Prettier not being opinionated enough? I haven't had that experience.

alwayspaytaxes

mybearworld wrote:
alwayspaytaxes wrote:
(#597)
In terms of style guides and formatting, Python undoubtedly wins. Using Black + Pylint helps format your code for basically all aspects, even how much line spacing should go between functions! ESLint is a nightmare to setup, its VSCode plugin barely works with TypeScript, and while Prettier is nice, it's just not opinionated enough for me.
Can you give an example of Prettier not being opinionated enough? I haven't had that experience.

It doesn't space out functions with a certain amount of lines like Black, and import sorting is essentially non-existent

Last edited by alwayspaytaxes (May 21, 2024 11:42:50)

dynamicsofscratch

it depends on personal opinion mostly

julmik6478

BigNate469 wrote:
julmik6478 wrote:
Python is lot easier. Look at this python code:
print(“Hello World”)
And now look at same, but in javascript:
console.log('Hello World');
Ok, this one is easy in javascript too, but more advanced things are easier in python and in python you don't need to add “;” at the end.

Technically speaking, in newer versions of (See post #598) JS you don't need to add the semicolon either, just a line break.
console.log('Hello World')
works the same as
console.log('Hello World');
That being said, adding the semicolon makes the code slightly more reliable.
Tip: use the [code] and [/code] tags to insert code into the forums. To specify automatic coloring based on programing language, use [code=insertlanguagenamehere][/code]
The language name must be in all lowercase.

I didn't know about it.

ElvenAnimator

Python, it has everything from scratchattach to circuits to websites to pen to file management to uhh you get the point

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