7 ms·

> TextWorld requires Python 3 and only supports Linux and macOS systems at the moment. Truly, this is a new Microsoft.

by cwyers 8y ago

benj111 8y ago
Indeed, I thought the MS was referring to something else, just based on the title. Of course they may want to be targeting Linux and MacOS for nefarious purposes, or maybe its a peace offering to make up for skype?
verst 8y ago
Probably works with Python3 in WSL (let's say Ubuntu). That's good enough for Windows support right? ;) Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft on Python, linux and container things. This however is just my personal opinion and I'm not affiliated with this project.
- pault 8y ago
  I have to use Windows at work after ten years of development exclusively on Mac and Linux. Once I set up wsl at work I found that almost all of my gripes about developing on Windows were gone and a month ago I switched my home office to Windows. If you had told me two years ago that I'd be using Windows full time as a Dev environment I would have asked you what were you smoking and can I have some. I have to say though, the first time I started up my "pro" operating system and saw an ad for Candy crush in my start menu I almost bailed.
  - escapecharacter 8y ago
    What program do you use for command line work? I’ve found Powershell and Cmder clunky compared to macOS terminal and any Ubuntu terminal.
    - coldacid 8y ago
      PSCore isn't bad so long as you don't load it down with Powershell modules. It only takes two or three beyond the built-ins to make it start crawling.
    - falcor84 8y ago
      I personally am very satisfied with ConEmu, launching Ubuntu 18.04's bash under WSL. My only gripe is with how messy it is to set up arrow keys to work in vim, and the solution I found doesn't work over ssh. EDIT: just to preempt suggestions that I should just use the home-row, I am, but it's really annoying for those of us not using qwerty (Colemak in my case).
    - daeken 8y ago
      I run an OpenSSH server inside WSL and then connect with Putty. It works perfectly, it's fast as hell, and it's super simple; it's just like connecting to any other box, really.
    - bashinator 8y ago
      I’m using gnome-terminal running in VcXsrv. The scrolling and font rendering is far better than any of the windows terninal apps I’ve tried.
    - tracker1 8y ago
      Hyper for bash, powershell ise for ps (really limited)
    - karate-fu 8y ago
      WSLtty is the only viable one if you ask me with Vim running a tad slow, but acceptable. Alacritty might soon overtake it.
    - gcb0 8y ago
      latelly the only way I can touch windows is with the shell from git-for-windows. it is surprisingly excellent.
- verst 8y ago
  For anyone using Docker I created an image for convenience. https://hub.docker.com/r/berndverst/mstextworld https://hub.docker.com/r/berndverst/mstextworld Source at: https://github.com/berndverst/mstextworld/ https://github.com/berndverst/mstextworld/
- freeone3000 8y ago
  I work on this project. We needed to pull in a few ways of running the backend game and communicating with it that weren't quite convenient on Windows. A number of integrated third-party components related to generating and running IF games are either linux-only or behave differently in windows and linux. In addition, the target audience is reinforcement learning researchers, who overwhelmingly use Python on Linux, so that focus was prioritized. Ubuntu on WSL actually is a test platform, and guided a few technical decisions (in part, WSL issues #902 and #162 narrowed what we could do). Honestly, that comment is not too far from the mark. :)
hanniabu 8y ago
Just goes to show how shitty Windows is. Impossible to program anything on Windows without it taking 5x as long.
4thaccount 8y ago
Yes and No. I think they understand the very real limitations of Windows and how developers and power users hate it. Let's compare and contrast the two. Linux has a usable shell that has GCC, Bash, Awk, dozens of specific commands that can be piped together, Perl, Python, TCL...etc all built-in and easily composable. Windows has well...CMD which is horrible, Batch files, VBScript (deprecated), VBA, and Powershell (a mess). If you install Visual Studio Tools you can get a C++ compiler and .NET languages like C# and VB.NET. Linux might have its faults, but the design is coherant and you can get stuff done. With Windows your only options are use a GUI or write at least a 1/2 page of code for something that is a oneliner in Linux. Powershell is a sometimes great (mostly meh) attempt to right this, but the everything is an object design is just simply more complex than the Unix philosophy of strings, pipes, and interoperable pieces. It seems like the Windows approach is to recognize the failing, while keeping in mind that a lot of desktop software uses Windows. So give developers Linux via WSL and people can still run their other Windows only software without Wine.
- userbinator 8y ago
  I am a developer (Win32; actually started with Win16 and DOS before that) and consider myself a "power user" of Windows, yet never had the feeling you describe. True, the -nix world has a great CLI shell, and some things are much easier there, but on the other hand, the GUI experience is (or at least used to be...) incomparable. AFAIK tiny single-exe-file no-install portable GUI applications just don't exist in the -nix world. I agree that PowersHell is a mess --- I tend to stay away from it and use CMD instead. In this particular case, it is very strange that they claim something which appears like it shouldn't be OS-dependent at all (Python is supposed to be portable, and there's no GUI stuff) would require a specific OS. A new Microsoft indeed, but unfortunately not one I'm a fan of...
  - 4thaccount 8y ago
    You can certainly create GUI apps on Linux, but I've never found the need or desire as the terminal works so well. Even with a GUI designer, it adds a bunch of code you wouldn't likely need if you had a decent environment. Of course if your app is for non technical folks, I sympathize and understand.

> TextWorld requires Python 3 and only supports Linux and macOS systems at the moment. Truly, this is a new Microsoft.

by cwyers 8y ago

> TextWorld requires Python 3 and only supports Linux and macOS systems at the moment. Truly, this is a new Microsoft.

Indeed, I thought the MS was referring to something else, just based on the title. Of course they may want to be targeting Linux and MacOS for nefarious purposes, or maybe its a peace offering to make up for skype?

verst 8y ago

Probably works with Python3 in WSL (let's say Ubuntu). That's good enough for Windows support right? ;) Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft on Python, linux and container things. This however is just my personal opinion and I'm not affiliated with this project.

pault 8y ago
I have to use Windows at work after ten years of development exclusively on Mac and Linux. Once I set up wsl at work I found that almost all of my gripes about developing on Windows were gone and a month ago I switched my home office to Windows. If you had told me two years ago that I'd be using Windows full time as a Dev environment I would have asked you what were you smoking and can I have some. I have to say though, the first time I started up my "pro" operating system and saw an ad for Candy crush in my start menu I almost bailed.
- escapecharacter 8y ago
  What program do you use for command line work? I’ve found Powershell and Cmder clunky compared to macOS terminal and any Ubuntu terminal.
  - coldacid 8y ago
    PSCore isn't bad so long as you don't load it down with Powershell modules. It only takes two or three beyond the built-ins to make it start crawling.
  - falcor84 8y ago
    I personally am very satisfied with ConEmu, launching Ubuntu 18.04's bash under WSL. My only gripe is with how messy it is to set up arrow keys to work in vim, and the solution I found doesn't work over ssh. EDIT: just to preempt suggestions that I should just use the home-row, I am, but it's really annoying for those of us not using qwerty (Colemak in my case).
  - daeken 8y ago
    I run an OpenSSH server inside WSL and then connect with Putty. It works perfectly, it's fast as hell, and it's super simple; it's just like connecting to any other box, really.
  - bashinator 8y ago
    I’m using gnome-terminal running in VcXsrv. The scrolling and font rendering is far better than any of the windows terninal apps I’ve tried.
  - tracker1 8y ago
    Hyper for bash, powershell ise for ps (really limited)
  - karate-fu 8y ago
    WSLtty is the only viable one if you ask me with Vim running a tad slow, but acceptable. Alacritty might soon overtake it.
  - gcb0 8y ago
    latelly the only way I can touch windows is with the shell from git-for-windows. it is surprisingly excellent.
verst 8y ago
For anyone using Docker I created an image for convenience. https://hub.docker.com/r/berndverst/mstextworld https://hub.docker.com/r/berndverst/mstextworld Source at: https://github.com/berndverst/mstextworld/ https://github.com/berndverst/mstextworld/
freeone3000 8y ago
I work on this project. We needed to pull in a few ways of running the backend game and communicating with it that weren't quite convenient on Windows. A number of integrated third-party components related to generating and running IF games are either linux-only or behave differently in windows and linux. In addition, the target audience is reinforcement learning researchers, who overwhelmingly use Python on Linux, so that focus was prioritized. Ubuntu on WSL actually is a test platform, and guided a few technical decisions (in part, WSL issues #902 and #162 narrowed what we could do). Honestly, that comment is not too far from the mark. :)

hanniabu 8y ago

Just goes to show how shitty Windows is. Impossible to program anything on Windows without it taking 5x as long.

4thaccount 8y ago

Yes and No. I think they understand the very real limitations of Windows and how developers and power users hate it. Let's compare and contrast the two. Linux has a usable shell that has GCC, Bash, Awk, dozens of specific commands that can be piped together, Perl, Python, TCL...etc all built-in and easily composable. Windows has well...CMD which is horrible, Batch files, VBScript (deprecated), VBA, and Powershell (a mess). If you install Visual Studio Tools you can get a C++ compiler and .NET languages like C# and VB.NET. Linux might have its faults, but the design is coherant and you can get stuff done. With Windows your only options are use a GUI or write at least a 1/2 page of code for something that is a oneliner in Linux. Powershell is a sometimes great (mostly meh) attempt to right this, but the everything is an object design is just simply more complex than the Unix philosophy of strings, pipes, and interoperable pieces. It seems like the Windows approach is to recognize the failing, while keeping in mind that a lot of desktop software uses Windows. So give developers Linux via WSL and people can still run their other Windows only software without Wine.

userbinator 8y ago
I am a developer (Win32; actually started with Win16 and DOS before that) and consider myself a "power user" of Windows, yet never had the feeling you describe. True, the -nix world has a great CLI shell, and some things are much easier there, but on the other hand, the GUI experience is (or at least used to be...) incomparable. AFAIK tiny single-exe-file no-install portable GUI applications just don't exist in the -nix world. I agree that PowersHell is a mess --- I tend to stay away from it and use CMD instead. In this particular case, it is very strange that they claim something which appears like it shouldn't be OS-dependent at all (Python is supposed to be portable, and there's no GUI stuff) would require a specific OS. A new Microsoft indeed, but unfortunately not one I'm a fan of...
- 4thaccount 8y ago
  You can certainly create GUI apps on Linux, but I've never found the need or desire as the terminal works so well. Even with a GUI designer, it adds a bunch of code you wouldn't likely need if you had a decent environment. Of course if your app is for non technical folks, I sympathize and understand.