Ask HN: Is Python dying?
I&#x27;ve only been using Python for 2 months now. I&#x27;m coming from a Ruby, Java, Node background. The things I don&#x27;t understand about Python and what I miss the most from those other languages is a solid tool chain. From package management down to the test runners. I miss Ruby gems, Bundler, Rack, and Gaurd tools. I miss Maven and the plethora of plugins. I miss NPM.<p>Pip is just OK. It feels like it&#x27;s missing something. Could be a simple lack of experience still. I haven&#x27;t found anything like Gaurd yet and yet to find a replacement for rack and NPM &#x27;s simple package.json. There is setup.py but it feels harder and wrapped in mystery still and doesn&#x27;t work universally the same for Python 2 and 3 which I have been causing some road blocks and extra cycles being wasted.<p>Most of all I hate the backward compatibility issues of Python 2 to 3. I rarely have issues running older Ruby or Java code in newer versions of the language. It seems ridiculous that it&#x27;s been a little over 7 years and people are still fighting with issues between Python 2 and 3 and you still need to pick a version to use. Sure you can code around it, but why the interpreter doesn&#x27;t handle backward compatibility with deprecation statements is just amazing to me. This isn&#x27;t a new thing. Languages like Java and Ruby do it as do plenty of others I&#x27;m sure if you wanted to make a syntax change you can handle the code in the interpreter and issue warnings to uograde them without breaking all old code bases.<p>But any ways, I digress, I don&#x27;t think Python is going anywhere. Too many people and companies use it. It&#x27;s got a lot of good libraries and and if you just start with Python 3 it&#x27;s language is just like any other programming language. It&#x27;s got some things you have to get used to that are unique to it but in the end, you can make it do what you need.<p>I personally think Ruby allows for nicer looking code and readability, and NodeJS has a far better Eco system. Hell, Languages like Elixir feel like a nice mixture of both with the huge added benefits of being highly  parallel at the VM layer.<p>PyPy seems like a better place to invest resources since the JIT can really speed things up.<p>That&#x27;s my 2 cents.