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Python dependency management is rubbish, and many python projects have incomplete or missing requirements.txt files. I dislike Python as well (why on earth is w

Python dependency management is rubbish, and many python projects have incomplete or missing requirements.txt files. I dislike Python as well (why on earth is whitespace relevant??) but unfortunately if you want to tinker with any of the newest deep-learning projects, you'll need python. I use Anaconda for package management on Ubuntu, which helps a lot, but it's still not my preferred programming language.

saltyfamiliar 5y ago
> why on earth is whitespace relevant?? To eliminate the need for braces and semicolons, of course. It's part of what makes python so easy to read and write. Is it really such a problem? I honestly can't imagine disliking python. It's my goto for anything where performance doesn't matter due to its unmatched ergonomics and vast libs. Golang comes close but for some reason having to implement really common and basic things yourself is part of the language's design philosophy. Plus it's compiled so you can't just drop into the interpreter for a slick one-liner. What's your preferred quick and dirty scripting/programming langage?
- forgingahead 5y ago
  I prefer Ruby for quick scripting - in my opinion it beats Python in readability (sugarcoating handlers/hiding guts like not needing self littered everywhere), and seems to have more logical consistency in calls (eg: array.append(element) but len(array) in Python vs. array.append(element) and array.length in Ruby, amongst many other things). It's definitely a preference, and Python has a lot of library support that the Ruby community doesn't (yet, hopefully), but grandparent's comment about headaches setting up Python with a simple project are pretty common. Rarely do I encounter a Python project that "just works" - If your setup isn't exactly the same as the repo owner, and often even they don't even know why their setup is the way it is, then there's often a lot of fiddling and package adjustments needed. Not a deal breaker normally, but enough to make it more painful to quickly drop in and start experimenting with.

saltyfamiliar 5y ago

> why on earth is whitespace relevant?? To eliminate the need for braces and semicolons, of course. It's part of what makes python so easy to read and write. Is it really such a problem? I honestly can't imagine disliking python. It's my goto for anything where performance doesn't matter due to its unmatched ergonomics and vast libs. Golang comes close but for some reason having to implement really common and basic things yourself is part of the language's design philosophy. Plus it's compiled so you can't just drop into the interpreter for a slick one-liner. What's your preferred quick and dirty scripting/programming langage?

forgingahead 5y ago
I prefer Ruby for quick scripting - in my opinion it beats Python in readability (sugarcoating handlers/hiding guts like not needing self littered everywhere), and seems to have more logical consistency in calls (eg: array.append(element) but len(array) in Python vs. array.append(element) and array.length in Ruby, amongst many other things). It's definitely a preference, and Python has a lot of library support that the Ruby community doesn't (yet, hopefully), but grandparent's comment about headaches setting up Python with a simple project are pretty common. Rarely do I encounter a Python project that "just works" - If your setup isn't exactly the same as the repo owner, and often even they don't even know why their setup is the way it is, then there's often a lot of fiddling and package adjustments needed. Not a deal breaker normally, but enough to make it more painful to quickly drop in and start experimenting with.