5 ms·

> `import shopify` makes an API request. Especially for a company that prides itself on great API design, this is head scratching. ‘shopify.Init()’ seems like

> `import shopify` makes an API request. Especially for a company that prides itself on great API design, this is head scratching. ‘shopify.Init()’ seems like such an obvious solution

yen223 6y ago
The fact that you can have side effects on imports, and that a lot of libraries relied on side effects on import, was one of my biggest sources of frustration with Python
- hn_acc_2 6y ago
  What other packages have you seen abusing import side effects? Shopify is the first one I've seen, so I don't think it's quite as common as you are implying, but I'm curious to know what other bad behavior you have found
  - OJFord 6y ago
    Not GP but I've been bitten by plenty of first-party implicit side-effects, both intended (by not me not now) and not (by me or otherwise).
  - mikepurvis 6y ago
    Sometimes libraries do a switcheroo where they run interpreted code on startup to locate the "real" implementation in a shared object, and then load that and replace themselves with it. I'm not sure this is really idomatic, but here's an example of what it looks like from OpenCV: https://github.com/opencv/opencv/blob/master/modules/python/package/cv2/__init__.py https://github.com/opencv/opencv/blob/master/modules/python/...
  - xeromal 6y ago
    LaunchDarkly does. It does some querying behind the scenes and added a significant delay to the coldstarts of our lambda apis
    - edoceo 6y ago
      Their PHP one had a similar shell_exec after-affect (c2017), caused some odd things in our logs but we backed away from that solution
  - jbay808 6y ago
    SKiDL (circuit design library) does this to a very large extent... https://github.com/xesscorp/skidl https://github.com/xesscorp/skidl
  - ilovetux 6y ago
    An example in the standard library is the antigravity package. While it is an inside joke it still requires a HTTP transaction similar to the shopify package import.
- PurpleFoxy 6y ago
  Can’t you do this with any interpreted language? On ruby your import could redefine anything.
- throwaway53453 6y ago
  Is there any real way around that? The import keyword might as well be renamed to exec.
  - JanisL 6y ago
    I think this depends on how brutal the workarounds you will accept are

> `import shopify` makes an API request. Especially for a company that prides itself on great API design, this is head scratching. ‘shopify.Init()’ seems like such an obvious solution

yen223 6y ago

The fact that you can have side effects on imports, and that a lot of libraries relied on side effects on import, was one of my biggest sources of frustration with Python

hn_acc_2 6y ago
What other packages have you seen abusing import side effects? Shopify is the first one I've seen, so I don't think it's quite as common as you are implying, but I'm curious to know what other bad behavior you have found
- OJFord 6y ago
  Not GP but I've been bitten by plenty of first-party implicit side-effects, both intended (by not me not now) and not (by me or otherwise).
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  Sometimes libraries do a switcheroo where they run interpreted code on startup to locate the "real" implementation in a shared object, and then load that and replace themselves with it. I'm not sure this is really idomatic, but here's an example of what it looks like from OpenCV: https://github.com/opencv/opencv/blob/master/modules/python/package/cv2/__init__.py https://github.com/opencv/opencv/blob/master/modules/python/...
- xeromal 6y ago
  LaunchDarkly does. It does some querying behind the scenes and added a significant delay to the coldstarts of our lambda apis
  - edoceo 6y ago
    Their PHP one had a similar shell_exec after-affect (c2017), caused some odd things in our logs but we backed away from that solution
- jbay808 6y ago
  SKiDL (circuit design library) does this to a very large extent... https://github.com/xesscorp/skidl https://github.com/xesscorp/skidl
- ilovetux 6y ago
  An example in the standard library is the antigravity package. While it is an inside joke it still requires a HTTP transaction similar to the shopify package import.
PurpleFoxy 6y ago
Can’t you do this with any interpreted language? On ruby your import could redefine anything.
throwaway53453 6y ago
Is there any real way around that? The import keyword might as well be renamed to exec.
- JanisL 6y ago
  I think this depends on how brutal the workarounds you will accept are