Python’s new t-strings

All things considered, this is pretty cool. Basically, this replaces

    db.execute("QUERY WHERE name = ?", (name,))

with

    db.execute(t"QUERY WHERE name = {name}")

Does the benefit from this syntactic sugar outweigh the added complexity of a new language feature? I think it does in this case for two reasons:

1. Allowing library developers to do whatever they want with {} expansions is a good thing, and will probably spawn some good uses.

2. Generalizing template syntax across a language, so that all libraries solve this problem in the same way, is probably a good thing.

I did a safe OCaml implementation of this about 20 years ago, the latest version being here:

https://github.com/darioteixeira/pgocaml

Note that the variables are safely and correctly interpolated at compile time. And it's type checked across the boundary too, by checking (at compile time) the column types with the live database.

Yes, what you did is strictly more powerful than what the Python people did. And you did it 20 years ago. Well done, have an upvote. And yet, here we are in 2025 with Python popularity growing unstoppably and (approximately) no one caring about OCaml (and all the other languages better than Python). It makes me sad.

It's interesting how the majority has explicitly chosen NOT to use the "better" languages. Is the majority really that bad in their judgment? Or is it that "better" is actually defined by adoption over time?

It's clearly better in their opinion, they just aren't optimizing for the same metrics that you are. Python is better because it's easy for people to learn, imo.

its not easy to learn. its a challenge even getting it installed and running. what even is a venv? how do you explain that to a beginner?

python is popular because its what teachers teach.

On modern Linux you can type `python` at the command prompt and get a REPL. On Windows you download an installer from the official website (just like one usually does to install anything on Windows), then use `py` at the command prompt.

You don't need to `import` anything to start teaching Python. Even then you can do quite a lot with the standard library. Even then, unless you're using 3.11 or later on Linux you can let Pip install with `--user` until you actually need to isolate things between projects. (And even with new Python on Linux, the instructor can typically avert this by just installing a separate Python in `/usr/local/bin` for example. Yes, that's "cheating", depending on the classroom environment. But that's part of the point: installation hurdles are hurdles for self-learners, not for students.)

You only need to learn about virtual environments once you have projects with mutually conflicting dependencies, and/or once you're at a point where you're ready to publish your own software and should be learning proper testing and development practices. (Which will be largely orthogonal to programming, and not trivial, in any language.)

And when your students do get to that point, you can give them a link such as https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2018/09/04/python-virtual-envi... .

Teachers teach Python because it's easy to teach while still being relevant to the real world, in particular because boilerplate is minimized. You don't have to explain jargon-y keywords like "public" or "static" up front. You don't have to use classes for quite some time (if ever, really). You can express iteration naturally. Types are naturally thought of in terms of capabilities.

In my mind, Python has all the pedagogical advantages of Lisp, plus enough syntactic cues to prevent getting "lost in a sea of parentheses". (Of course, it lacks plenty of other nice Lisp-family features.)

> In my mind, Python has all the pedagogical advantages of Lisp, plus enough syntactic cues to prevent getting "lost in a sea of parentheses". (Of course, it lacks plenty of other nice Lisp-family features.)

What you say here reminds me of something Peter Norvig said 15 years ago on this site: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1803815

> Peter Norvig here. I came to Python not because I thought it was a better/acceptable/pragmatic Lisp, but because it was better pseudocode. Several students claimed that they had a hard time mapping from the pseudocode in my AI textbook to the Lisp code that Russell and I had online. So I looked for the language that was most like our pseudocode, and found that Python was the best match. Then I had to teach myself enough Python to implement the examples from the textbook. I found that Python was very nice for certain types of small problems, and had the libraries I needed to integrate with lots of other stuff, at Google and elsewhere on the net.

Basically, that it's better pedagogically because it looks like pseudo-code and it's easy to get up and running quickly.

Which is valid, but frustrating to see it lead to actual adoption outside of pedagogy. That property is entirely orthogonal to, almost at odds with, what makes a good programming language for medium to large production quality applications.

If we used that logic elsewhere in life we’d all be playing the flute and cycling around on tricycles and balance bikes. But for some reason in tech it’s all about Hello World.