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markandrewj commented on Python has had async for 10 years – why isn't it more popular?   tonybaloney.github.io/pos... · Posted by u/willm
ErikBjare · 4 months ago
I have no problem with async in JS or Rust, but async in Python is a very different beast, and like many people in this thread I do my best to avoid the fully loaded footgun altogether. Writing maintainable Python basically requires avoiding it, so I strongly disagree with "regardless of language".
markandrewj · 4 months ago
Maybe, but I wouldn't go back to Python 2 without async. It has also improved over time in Python. I have also had success using async in Python. I do understand what the article talks about however. Understanding the difference between blocking and non-blocking code is also a concept relevant to Python. In Node it's one of the concepts you are first introduced to, because Node is single threaded by default. I also understand in Go and other languages there are different options.

https://nodejs.org/en/learn/asynchronous-work/overview-of-bl...

I will agree with what some is said a above, BEAM is pretty great. I have been using it recently through Elixir.

markandrewj commented on Python has had async for 10 years – why isn't it more popular?   tonybaloney.github.io/pos... · Posted by u/willm
Yoric · 4 months ago
Hey, I'm one of the (many, many) people who made async in JavaScript happen and I find async complicated.
markandrewj · 4 months ago
Hey Yoric, I do not want to underplay what it is like to work with async, but I think there has been a lot of improvements to make it easier, especially in JavaScript/ECMAScript. It is nice not to have to work directly with promises in the same way that was required previously. The language has matured a lot since I started using in Netscape Navigator (I see you formerly worked at Mozilla). I think coding can be complicated in general, although it shouldn't have to be. I think having a mental model for async from the start can be helpful, and understanding the difference between blocking and non blocking code. A lot of people learned writing synchronous code first, so I think it can be hard to develop the mental model and intuit it.
markandrewj commented on Python has had async for 10 years – why isn't it more popular?   tonybaloney.github.io/pos... · Posted by u/willm
throw-qqqqq · 4 months ago
> But all it did was show us that async code just plain sucks compared to green thread code that can just block, instead of having to do the async dances.

I take so much flak for this opinion at work, but I agree with you 100%.

Code that looks synchronous, but is really async, has funny failure modes and idiosyncracies, and I generally see more bugs in the async parts of our code at work.

Maybe I’m just old, but I don’t think it’s worth it. Syntactic sugar over continuations/closures basically..

markandrewj · 4 months ago
I can tell you guys work with languages like Go, so this isn't true for yourselves, but I usually find it is developers that only ever work with synchronous code who find async complicated. Which isn't surprising, if you don't understand something it can seem complicated. My views is almost that people should learn how to write async code by default now. Regardless of the language. Writing modern applications basically requires it, although not all the time obviously.
markandrewj commented on Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything   github.com/anthropics/cla... · Posted by u/pr337h4m
markandrewj · 4 months ago
Almost never here Claude say no about programming specific tasks.
markandrewj commented on I fought in Ukraine and here's why FPV drones kind of suck   warontherocks.com/2025/06... · Posted by u/_tk_
markandrewj · 6 months ago
It is interesting hearing feedback from the frontline. Even with the issues, I think it is clear drones are changing modern warfare when you have companies like Anduril. What most people think is coming next is autonomous drones, although I don't morally agree with it. Sorry you had to have this experience, I wish this war would end, too many lives have been lost and it is senseless.
markandrewj commented on Oracle customers confirm data stolen in alleged cloud breach is valid   bleepingcomputer.com/news... · Posted by u/el_duderino
cess11 · 9 months ago
If you handle large amounts of geographical data you'll need to invest quite a bit to move to Postgres. It's possible but you're going to need to touch a lot of existing code and figure out new performance characteristics and so on. A lot of it will be hard for an average organisation, not because it's very sophisticated and complex but because it will be large amounts of boring rote work that many developers don't see how they could do programmatically.

Rumour has it the same holds for some other types of data as well but I lack immediate experience in other areas.

With Oracle you also have a rather robust, exhaustive documentation of error messages and even obscure stuff is likely to be figured out in some forum thread by someone and an indian guy. Postgres isn't exactly bad in this area but you can run into things where you need to go deep in debugging yourself and figure out minutiae of your specific version.

Containers also remove most of the issues with running several instances in development and CI environments.

I still don't recommend anyone to pick Oracle for greenfield stuff, instead you should work around shortcomings in other database engines, but for a large organisation with certain demands that already has buyin it makes sense.

markandrewj · 9 months ago
Postgres is commonly used in GIS, via PostGIS (https://postgis.net). That said it is Oracles model to try to lock customers in.
markandrewj commented on WordPress CEO quits community Slack after court injunction   404media.co/wordpress-wp-... · Posted by u/davidcollantes
markandrewj · a year ago
As someone who was around before WordPress existed, and witnessed all the proprietary CMS systems of the day, as well as personally building custom CMS systems professionally, it disappoints me to watch this unfold.

I used to see WordPress as an example of how open-source can be good business. Being open-source, and comparatively better then other proprietary options at the time, made WordPress an attractive option, and its user base grew rapidly. Blogging was also more popular then, although people still blog.

I think as of today there are better options then WordPress, and blogging is not the same as in the past. I think because of peoples history with products like WordPress, many people have gravitated towards static site generators.

Early on Automattic seemed like a place I might want to work, but obviously a lot that has changed since WordPress first launched. I can't see myself wanting to work there now, or wanting to use WordPress again. Not to mention I moved on from PHP a long time ago.

markandrewj commented on React 19   github.com/facebook/react... · Posted by u/gajus
demarq · a year ago
Awesome release.

I feel sorry though for someone getting into frontend dev now.

> is a new hook to order Actions inside of a Transition with access to the state of the action, and the pending state. It accepts a reducer that can call Actions, and the initial state used for first render. It also accepts an optional string that is used if the action is passed to a form action prop to support progressive enhancement in forms.

I’m pretty sure it’s a cool feature but, what a mouthful. Imagine you decided to start developing websites today, how do you even start?

EDIT: React is still an exceptional framework and this release is certainly an improvement.

My criticism is more FE development in general not just React.

markandrewj · a year ago
I generally feel the opposite way. React was changing every few weeks when I started using it, the docs and API are much more stable and consistent now. In general web standards are more stable then ever also. People younger then myself won't have learn 100s of layout hacks to get their pages displaying properly cross browser, or sometimes even in just one browser. This is just my perspective, although I also understand JavaScript fatigue, I feel it is actually one of the best times to start learning.

u/markandrewj

KarmaCake day236July 12, 2018View Original