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Python has had async for 10 years – why isn't it more popular?

(tonybaloney.github.io)
320 points willm | 2 comments | 02 Sep 25 17:24 UTC | HN request time: 0.45s | source
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atomicnumber3 ◴[02 Sep 25 17:41 UTC] No.45106455[source]▶
The author gets close to what I think the root problem is, but doesn't call it out.

The truth is that in python, async was too little, too late. By the time it was introduced, most people who actually needed to do lots of io concurrently had their own workarounds (forking, etc) and people who didn't actually need it had found out how to get by without it (multiprocessing etc).

Meanwhile, go showed us what good green threads can look like. Then java did it too. Meanwhile, js had better async support the whole time. 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.

So, why engage with it when you already had good solutions?

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1. jacquesm ◴[03 Sep 25 00:16 UTC] No.45110805[source]▶
There are much better solutions for the same problems, but not in Python. If you really need such high throughput you'd move to Go, the JVM or Erlang/Elixer depending on the kind of workload you have rather than to much around with Python on something that it clearly was never intended to do in the first place. It is amazing they got it to work as well as it does but the impedance mismatch is pretty clear and it will never feel natural.
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2. ch4s3 ◴[03 Sep 25 02:47 UTC] No.45111785[source]▶
Elixir is a really nice replacement for a lot of places where you could you python but don't absolutely have to, particularly anything web related. You get a lot more out of the same machine with code that's similarly readable for building HTTP APIs.