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What do you mean by; "astounding the amount of work that needs to be done in the python ecosystem!"? Can you provide examples of different ecosystems that woul

What do you mean by; "astounding the amount of work that needs to be done in the python ecosystem!"? Can you provide examples of different ecosystems that would compare favorably in your opinion?

danharaj 9y ago
I write both python and haskell for my day job. I think the latter has much better project management when it's paired with Nix. Even without Nix, stackage and even just dealing with Cabal is much easier than the mess in the Python ecosystem.
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  The stability of the Haskell ecosystem is something I just can not understand. It's not enforced by policies, the tooling isn't much more helpful than in any other language, and it is not more mature than any widely used ecosystem. It feels like Haskell libraries just need less changes.
  - jdormit 9y ago
    (I've never seriously used Haskell) I wonder if the strong static typing has something to do with that. That eliminates many if the common bugs found in Python programs.
    - xapata 9y ago
      In my experience, type errors in Python get discovered during testing. So, I doubt that's the reason. Perhaps the nature of Haskell discourages changes, making the community more stable.
      - yen223 9y ago
        > In my experience, type errors in Python get discovered during testing That would be the optimistic view. In reality, `NoneType has no attribute Foo` errors happen in production all the time.
        xapata 9y ago
        Perhaps because someone got into the (bad) habit of returning Nones instead of raising errors. Errors should never pass silently, etc. The older Python APIs have that C habit of sentinel values, but more modern style is to raise an error on failure.
        yen223 9y ago
        Functions implicitly returns None if you forget to provide a return value on any of the branches. This is an error that can easily slip past eyeball reviews, since this is caused by the absence of something.
        xapata 9y ago
        Shouldn't unit tests be exploring all the code paths? I know that's tough to enforce, but it's ideal. Regardless of whether you use a static analyzer. And Python does have static analyzers, including for typing.
    - marcosdumay 9y ago
      I don't think it's strong types either. It is not about the libraries having less bugs, but about they keeping compatibility for much longer (and when they break it, they tend to break in smaller ways). Could be because of extra flexibility those types grant you, but it's not about bugs.
  - danharaj 9y ago
    In my opinion it's because Haskell sits at the intersection of a lot of high power-to-weight-ratio features that let you build very robust and expressive pieces of functionality at any abstraction level. That means that libraries can easily build on each other. A lot of cool gadgets in Haskell would have to be built into Python at the language level to be usable (note the proliferation of keywords in Python..).
ainiriand 9y ago
Come on, you only have to take a look at the javascript ecosystem to know what I´m talking about. Tenths of bundlers, a cuple of good dependency resolvers, a myriad of test frameworks, etc... In python you are lucky if you have one of each.

What do you mean by; "astounding the amount of work that needs to be done in the python ecosystem!"? Can you provide examples of different ecosystems that would compare favorably in your opinion?

danharaj 9y ago

I write both python and haskell for my day job. I think the latter has much better project management when it's paired with Nix. Even without Nix, stackage and even just dealing with Cabal is much easier than the mess in the Python ecosystem.

marcosdumay 9y ago
The stability of the Haskell ecosystem is something I just can not understand. It's not enforced by policies, the tooling isn't much more helpful than in any other language, and it is not more mature than any widely used ecosystem. It feels like Haskell libraries just need less changes.
- jdormit 9y ago
  (I've never seriously used Haskell) I wonder if the strong static typing has something to do with that. That eliminates many if the common bugs found in Python programs.
  - xapata 9y ago
    In my experience, type errors in Python get discovered during testing. So, I doubt that's the reason. Perhaps the nature of Haskell discourages changes, making the community more stable.
    - yen223 9y ago
      > In my experience, type errors in Python get discovered during testing That would be the optimistic view. In reality, `NoneType has no attribute Foo` errors happen in production all the time.
      - xapata 9y ago
        Perhaps because someone got into the (bad) habit of returning Nones instead of raising errors. Errors should never pass silently, etc. The older Python APIs have that C habit of sentinel values, but more modern style is to raise an error on failure.
        yen223 9y ago
        Functions implicitly returns None if you forget to provide a return value on any of the branches. This is an error that can easily slip past eyeball reviews, since this is caused by the absence of something.
        xapata 9y ago
        Shouldn't unit tests be exploring all the code paths? I know that's tough to enforce, but it's ideal. Regardless of whether you use a static analyzer. And Python does have static analyzers, including for typing.
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    I don't think it's strong types either. It is not about the libraries having less bugs, but about they keeping compatibility for much longer (and when they break it, they tend to break in smaller ways). Could be because of extra flexibility those types grant you, but it's not about bugs.
- danharaj 9y ago
  In my opinion it's because Haskell sits at the intersection of a lot of high power-to-weight-ratio features that let you build very robust and expressive pieces of functionality at any abstraction level. That means that libraries can easily build on each other. A lot of cool gadgets in Haskell would have to be built into Python at the language level to be usable (note the proliferation of keywords in Python..).

ainiriand 9y ago

Come on, you only have to take a look at the javascript ecosystem to know what I´m talking about. Tenths of bundlers, a cuple of good dependency resolvers, a myriad of test frameworks, etc... In python you are lucky if you have one of each.