5 ms·

I have similar feelings about Python.

by Rapzid 10y ago

cshenton 10y ago
What problems do you run into? I've had good luck with a pretty vanilla virtualenv + requirements.txt files, and docker for packaging (great for c libs that my python packages call down to).
- Rapzid 10y ago
  I've worked through most of my packaging and pyenv/virtualenv issues but I must say I found it much more convoluted and painful than any other language I've worked with in the past 6 years. The need for all the virtualenv's makes me sad, and I'm not a huge fan of the shim system. Working on multiple projects that need different versions of a dependency, particularly when your also working on that dependency, can be a pain still. This is very subjective but pipenv was just released THIS YEAR and has over 3k stars on github; clearly there is some general angst out there. But I more meant the ecosystem in general: A "batteries included" language makes me create my own UTC tzinfo implementation so I can get a datetime in UTC... Python's time situation is maddening and by far the worst I've worked with. I'm sure others feel this way because there are a bakers dozen of time libraries trying to fill the gaps. I almost rage quit the industry trying to save and retrieve a UTC datetime from the database with sqlalchemy. Luckily I found Arrow and ArrowType and that's been working well enough for now. On the subject of time this has been open for close to five years? https://bugs.python.org/issue15873 https://bugs.python.org/issue15873 . I get the impression that lots of proposed improvements are languishing like this. sqlalchemy and alembic feel like JUST ONE GUY is working on them. Massive achievement, but the gaps are visible. The module system feels stale; a holdout of a system from different workflow times. Splitting stuff off into separate files for maintainability(including improving multi-dev workflows trying to reduce conflicts) creates some gross imports. It feels like there is a reluctance to evolve the language itself; a lot of enhancements appear to be made via more magic metaprogramming and function usage. super(Cls, self).__init__() comes off as an artifact of this. Not really my cup of tea these days, but I can see how this is very subjective. The propper way to handle generated members with pylint is supposedly a plugin; which almost no projects provide. Type annotations are supposed to go a long way in 3.x, but the prevalence of metaprogramming and lack of tooling awareness has probably defeated more jedi than Darth Vader. boto3 has no official async support even though lambda just released support for Python 3.6. Meanwhile the javascript sdk is shipping with TypeScript definitions and a new promise interface. A lot of this is very subjective(other than perhaps the languishing of certain library areas) of course. To me though, after having worked with a lot of other languages, it just feels like Python is a bit of a ghetto these days. It's like the language world has built north and Python is.. Not living to the north. EDIT: The pipenv announcement thread has some comments that go into more detail on package/project management situation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13459740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13459740 . sjellis and sametmax touch on most of the stuff I've run into.
bitexploder 10y ago
I think JS ecosystem is an order of magnitude more unstable. I can still write a Django/Flask/Pyramid app in roughly the same way I did 5 years ago. The key libraries have longer and more consistent development. The whole environment is just easier to use. Maybe I am biased from nearly a decade of heavy Pyhton use, but I have written a non-trivial amount of JS code. Angular 1 is basically a relic. It just isn't a user friendly sandbox to play in. Python has its warts but we build and use tools in Python and it seems much easier than JS.
- ng12 10y ago
  Is your complaint that JS development is getting better? People didn't ditch Angular1 because it was old, they ditched it because Angular2 is better.
  - mercer 10y ago
    That's not saying much though. I keep reading that Angular 2 is still a really bad idea (haven't gotten to using it myself though). What's your experience comparing Angular 2 to other frameworks you've tried?
  - bitexploder 10y ago
    I am just saying that the "newest" tools in Python are more stable and if you pick a popular framework or package in Python chances are good it will still be active years later. Whereas JS community seems to have ADHD and things like TypeScript come along in the JS world. The cost of learning and staying modern in JS and front end development in particular is high. It does create meaningful new ideas but it is a mess compared to investing in almost any other popular language. So, I learned Angular 1 for a project. Some concept there really are everywhere (promises, DI), but you might as well not even call Anuglar 2 Angular. It is totally different and even getting started in it took so much effort I gave up. I have almost never done that as a hacker. But the sheer amount of stuff to install and learn just to implement Hello World was more than I was willing to deal with at the time.
    - 10y ago
sidlls 10y ago
The language I use day-to-day in my current job (machine learning and data engineering) is Python, although I employ a smattering of C++ and, lately, Rust as well (the only one to use either of the latter, that I'm aware of, in the company). Python's virtualenv/pip system, for all its warts, is orders of magnitude better than any JS package management system I've seen.
- indexerror 10y ago
  > Python's virtualenv/pip system, for all its warts, is orders of magnitude better than any JS package management system I've seen In terms of what? Can you please do a npm vs pip and a nvm vs virtualenv? Thanks
- Can_Not 10y ago
  > Python's virtualenv/pip system, for all its warts, is orders of magnitude better than any JS package management system I've seen. I've had the complete opposite experience. Crates, composer, and npm are my go-to examples of good package mangers. Python is my go-to example for lack of a good package manager.
milesrout 10y ago
Well that's simply stupid. Python is utterly different from JS in this respect.
tigershark 10y ago
I second this. I'm tired of fighting to enable my AMD card on the MacBook Pro in theano. Maybe I will find a working solution one day, but I'm supposed to learn neural networks, not all the environmental problems when using a Mac with an amd card. And apparently at some point in time it used to work, albeit compiling stuff from the develop branch of some libs. Now it seems broken, at least with python 3.5 and/or with the stuff on my machine..

I have similar feelings about Python.

by Rapzid 10y ago

I have similar feelings about Python.

What problems do you run into? I've had good luck with a pretty vanilla virtualenv + requirements.txt files, and docker for packaging (great for c libs that my python packages call down to).

Rapzid 10y ago
I've worked through most of my packaging and pyenv/virtualenv issues but I must say I found it much more convoluted and painful than any other language I've worked with in the past 6 years. The need for all the virtualenv's makes me sad, and I'm not a huge fan of the shim system. Working on multiple projects that need different versions of a dependency, particularly when your also working on that dependency, can be a pain still. This is very subjective but pipenv was just released THIS YEAR and has over 3k stars on github; clearly there is some general angst out there. But I more meant the ecosystem in general: A "batteries included" language makes me create my own UTC tzinfo implementation so I can get a datetime in UTC... Python's time situation is maddening and by far the worst I've worked with. I'm sure others feel this way because there are a bakers dozen of time libraries trying to fill the gaps. I almost rage quit the industry trying to save and retrieve a UTC datetime from the database with sqlalchemy. Luckily I found Arrow and ArrowType and that's been working well enough for now. On the subject of time this has been open for close to five years? https://bugs.python.org/issue15873 https://bugs.python.org/issue15873 . I get the impression that lots of proposed improvements are languishing like this. sqlalchemy and alembic feel like JUST ONE GUY is working on them. Massive achievement, but the gaps are visible. The module system feels stale; a holdout of a system from different workflow times. Splitting stuff off into separate files for maintainability(including improving multi-dev workflows trying to reduce conflicts) creates some gross imports. It feels like there is a reluctance to evolve the language itself; a lot of enhancements appear to be made via more magic metaprogramming and function usage. super(Cls, self).__init__() comes off as an artifact of this. Not really my cup of tea these days, but I can see how this is very subjective. The propper way to handle generated members with pylint is supposedly a plugin; which almost no projects provide. Type annotations are supposed to go a long way in 3.x, but the prevalence of metaprogramming and lack of tooling awareness has probably defeated more jedi than Darth Vader. boto3 has no official async support even though lambda just released support for Python 3.6. Meanwhile the javascript sdk is shipping with TypeScript definitions and a new promise interface. A lot of this is very subjective(other than perhaps the languishing of certain library areas) of course. To me though, after having worked with a lot of other languages, it just feels like Python is a bit of a ghetto these days. It's like the language world has built north and Python is.. Not living to the north. EDIT: The pipenv announcement thread has some comments that go into more detail on package/project management situation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13459740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13459740 . sjellis and sametmax touch on most of the stuff I've run into.

bitexploder 10y ago

I think JS ecosystem is an order of magnitude more unstable. I can still write a Django/Flask/Pyramid app in roughly the same way I did 5 years ago. The key libraries have longer and more consistent development. The whole environment is just easier to use. Maybe I am biased from nearly a decade of heavy Pyhton use, but I have written a non-trivial amount of JS code. Angular 1 is basically a relic. It just isn't a user friendly sandbox to play in. Python has its warts but we build and use tools in Python and it seems much easier than JS.

ng12 10y ago
Is your complaint that JS development is getting better? People didn't ditch Angular1 because it was old, they ditched it because Angular2 is better.
- mercer 10y ago
  That's not saying much though. I keep reading that Angular 2 is still a really bad idea (haven't gotten to using it myself though). What's your experience comparing Angular 2 to other frameworks you've tried?
- bitexploder 10y ago
  I am just saying that the "newest" tools in Python are more stable and if you pick a popular framework or package in Python chances are good it will still be active years later. Whereas JS community seems to have ADHD and things like TypeScript come along in the JS world. The cost of learning and staying modern in JS and front end development in particular is high. It does create meaningful new ideas but it is a mess compared to investing in almost any other popular language. So, I learned Angular 1 for a project. Some concept there really are everywhere (promises, DI), but you might as well not even call Anuglar 2 Angular. It is totally different and even getting started in it took so much effort I gave up. I have almost never done that as a hacker. But the sheer amount of stuff to install and learn just to implement Hello World was more than I was willing to deal with at the time.
  - 10y ago

sidlls 10y ago

The language I use day-to-day in my current job (machine learning and data engineering) is Python, although I employ a smattering of C++ and, lately, Rust as well (the only one to use either of the latter, that I'm aware of, in the company). Python's virtualenv/pip system, for all its warts, is orders of magnitude better than any JS package management system I've seen.

indexerror 10y ago
> Python's virtualenv/pip system, for all its warts, is orders of magnitude better than any JS package management system I've seen In terms of what? Can you please do a npm vs pip and a nvm vs virtualenv? Thanks
Can_Not 10y ago
> Python's virtualenv/pip system, for all its warts, is orders of magnitude better than any JS package management system I've seen. I've had the complete opposite experience. Crates, composer, and npm are my go-to examples of good package mangers. Python is my go-to example for lack of a good package manager.

milesrout 10y ago

Well that's simply stupid. Python is utterly different from JS in this respect.

tigershark 10y ago

I second this. I'm tired of fighting to enable my AMD card on the MacBook Pro in theano. Maybe I will find a working solution one day, but I'm supposed to learn neural networks, not all the environmental problems when using a Mac with an amd card. And apparently at some point in time it used to work, albeit compiling stuff from the develop branch of some libs. Now it seems broken, at least with python 3.5 and/or with the stuff on my machine..