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Python is deceptive. They lure you in with its simplicity, and then one day you want to deploy your software and you realize that it's more complicated than any

Python is deceptive. They lure you in with its simplicity, and then one day you want to deploy your software and you realize that it's more complicated than any other programming language ever conceived of.

pansa2 5y ago
Yes - this is the reason I've switched to Go for writing command-line apps. I don't like Go as much as Python (Go is simpler, but not as easy), but being able to compile a self-contained executable is huge. It's also great to have access to GIL-free parallelism. I don't expect Python to support either of those things any time soon.
dijit 5y ago
Because of dependency management, or?
- dagw 5y ago
  Because of having to know what WSGI and ASGI are and picking the right one. Then pick which implementation of the above you want to use. Then configuring it correctly for your app. And finally make it play nicely with nginx/apache/whatever. If on the other hand you're trying to deploy a desktop app, that is an entirely different kettle of 'fun'.
  - aitchnyu 5y ago
    <dream> There is a very fast Gunicorn replacement in Rust that accepts an wsgi/asgi module and a static dir and starts serving both. It breaks performance barriers for pure Python servers. It can automagically create systemd service and nginx site or just exist as a Docker entry point.
  - maccolgan 5y ago
    That's not really a criticism of Python, is it? What do you want? One Way To Do Things with No Configuration with magical compatibility with nginx/apache/whatever ?
    - badsectoracula 5y ago
      Well, according to the Zen of Python "there should be one- and preferably only one -obvious way to do it" :-P
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Because of having to know what WSGI and ASGI are and picking the right one. Then pick which implementation of the above you want to use. Then configuring it correctly for your app. And finally make it play nicely with nginx/apache/whatever. None if the Python in I deploy has to deal with any of that, all of which applies in a very narrow particular application domain. Even if it was a source of valid criticism, it would only be of using Python for that specific use, not generally.
akmittal 5y ago
What kind you issues you get during deployment? I think if running on right version then there should not be any issues.
- gypsyharlot 5y ago
  https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52187362/how-to-deploy-python-script https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52187362/how-to-deploy-p... Some of these approaches work for Windows, others for Mac, some for Linux, depending on versions of Python that are installed, etc. You can get around some of the problems with pyenv and a bunch of other tools.
- ido 5y ago
  I was originally using python (learned it in my first job back in 2001!) & that was the reason I eventually moved to other languages - python as a language is great but the tooling/ecosystem isn't for exactly these issues (or at least weren't at the time, that's also at least a decade+ ago by now). My impression at the time was that using it for server side stuff was fine (i have control of the server and simply install all the right things/versions myself) but packaging it up for end users to install on their desktops/mobile was a huge pain, there was no real easy/simple way to just export a self running installer that you double click (on windows/mac) or an IPA/APK (on ios/android) and end up with a running program the way users were used to from e.g. a bundled .net (at the time using mono, now ms provides cross platforms .net implementations themselves) or native c/c++ executable.
DemocracyFTW 5y ago
This is a solved problem. The community provides a handy system overview[^1] that should be good enough for most cases. [^1]: https://xkcd.com/1987/ https://xkcd.com/1987/
- SteadBytes 5y ago
  Didn’t even need to open the link to know what it was, thanks for the laugh!
agumonkey 5y ago
It's probably the most voiced complaint these days, unless core devs are deaf, I bet ten solid dollars they're gonna address that soon.
- jshen 5y ago
  It’s been like this for over a decade. I wouldn’t hold my breath. By comparison, I’m pretty sure the Ruby community adopted bundler over a decade ago.
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    Maybe they were busy on other things. Py3k, async. Now these are settled I don't see what other defect needs to be worked on
askvictor 5y ago
I don't know; I've just written something in .net/c# and it's pretty bloddy difficult to deploy.
- gkbrk 5y ago
  .NET can export self-contained single-file executable that doesn't require any runtime on the target computer/server. Python has solutions like PyInstaller, but it's not built-in and requires building on the same system. In .NET, you can use the built-in tools to export binaries for Linux from Windows.
  - byteface 5y ago
    Most windows users have at least 4/5 versions of linux installed on their machine so it's a non issue. They have wsl, a base installed partition, vagrant, a VM and probably docker containers. so running one extra command to gen a windows package isn't a big deal.
  - askvictor 5y ago
    Except when you have some specific dependencies/targets that make this difficult. I'm sure I'll get there eventually, but I chose .net for this thinking it would be dead simple, and yet here I am wading through documentation and stackoverflow posts to get to my self-contained single-file executable.
- rowanG077 5y ago
  .net/C# was one of the easiest to deploy in my experience. Just build a self-contained executable and you're done.
salex89 5y ago
Wouldn't say it better myself. Everything you gain with fast coding you lose on tackling performance issues, GIL, dependency management... Things harder to solve once you're committed to production.
- peakaboo 5y ago
  It depends very much on what you are doing. Python for big complicated applications is a No for me also but python for extraction jobs in a ETL pipeline or data science tasks is a huge YES.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
matkoniecz 5y ago
Can you be more specific about your claims? What is wrong with Python? > more complicated than any other programming language ever conceived of is definitely untrue. Even if you take only mainstream languages then there are many more annoying to deploy, ones that are more complicated and so on.
- jshen 5y ago
  Dependency management in python is much worse than most mainstream languages.
  - matkoniecz 5y ago
    Here I agree, but it is quite far away from > more complicated than any other programming language ever conceived of
    - gypsyharlot 5y ago
      It was far easier for me to grok monads in Haskell (and it took less time), than to learn how to properly deploy a Python application. Given that monads are often a complaint and testament to the "complexity" of Haskell, I think it's unfair to make the claim that Python is uncomplicated. If you use a language for some period of time, it is very likely that you will have to deal with the tooling at some point.
    - eesmith 5y ago
      I think the "it's" in "it's more complicated" refers to deploying software, not the language itself nor its support packages.
tigr 5y ago
Have you ever tried to deploy an Erlang/OTP application? I find it much harder to do
- vland 5y ago
  No, but Go and C++ are much easier to deploy.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rcarmo 5y ago
This comment is deceptive. This is a solved problem with virtualenvs. It is why Piku (https://github.com/piku https://github.com/piku) can deploy isolated apps with ease (and actually devotes less than 80 lines of code to the actual Python deployment).
- gypsyharlot 5y ago
  Thanks for taking the opportunity to advertise your own product, but it doesn't solve the problem.
  - rcarmo 5y ago
    It’s not a product. It’s an example of why it isn’t a problem, and it was actually _designed_ around virtualenvs, which is why it’s just a single script (again, not a product).
globular-toast 5y ago
When you say "deploy" do you mean "put it on a webserver"? I've deployed python Web services on to very limited environments that have nothing more than an interpreter. Nowadays I use pip-tools and docker which makes updating trivial. Do you perhaps mean distribution as an app? I've had luck with pyinstaller. There can be fiddly bits but overall it's pretty smooth. It's easier if you are targeting a system with an interpreter, like a Linux distro. Overall I just think you need to know what you're doing. I don't really think this is a bad thing. Maybe you could elaborate on what your difficulties are? From here I just don't see how it's more difficult than anything else.
- gypsyharlot 5y ago
  Read and learn: https://sedimental.org/the_packaging_gradient.html https://sedimental.org/the_packaging_gradient.html
  - globular-toast 5y ago
    Thanks, I know all of that. What made you think I don't?
mrlonglong 5y ago
I recently wrote a python script to handle serial communication and uploading of a bare metal binary to my RPi3, this saves me so much time debugging now that I don't need to swap SD cards continually. Excellent tool.

pansa2 5y ago

Yes - this is the reason I've switched to Go for writing command-line apps. I don't like Go as much as Python (Go is simpler, but not as easy), but being able to compile a self-contained executable is huge. It's also great to have access to GIL-free parallelism. I don't expect Python to support either of those things any time soon.

dijit 5y ago

Because of dependency management, or?

dagw 5y ago
Because of having to know what WSGI and ASGI are and picking the right one. Then pick which implementation of the above you want to use. Then configuring it correctly for your app. And finally make it play nicely with nginx/apache/whatever. If on the other hand you're trying to deploy a desktop app, that is an entirely different kettle of 'fun'.
- aitchnyu 5y ago
  <dream> There is a very fast Gunicorn replacement in Rust that accepts an wsgi/asgi module and a static dir and starts serving both. It breaks performance barriers for pure Python servers. It can automagically create systemd service and nginx site or just exist as a Docker entry point.
- maccolgan 5y ago
  That's not really a criticism of Python, is it? What do you want? One Way To Do Things with No Configuration with magical compatibility with nginx/apache/whatever ?
  - badsectoracula 5y ago
    Well, according to the Zen of Python "there should be one- and preferably only one -obvious way to do it" :-P
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Because of having to know what WSGI and ASGI are and picking the right one. Then pick which implementation of the above you want to use. Then configuring it correctly for your app. And finally make it play nicely with nginx/apache/whatever. None if the Python in I deploy has to deal with any of that, all of which applies in a very narrow particular application domain. Even if it was a source of valid criticism, it would only be of using Python for that specific use, not generally.

akmittal 5y ago

What kind you issues you get during deployment? I think if running on right version then there should not be any issues.

gypsyharlot 5y ago
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52187362/how-to-deploy-python-script https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52187362/how-to-deploy-p... Some of these approaches work for Windows, others for Mac, some for Linux, depending on versions of Python that are installed, etc. You can get around some of the problems with pyenv and a bunch of other tools.
ido 5y ago
I was originally using python (learned it in my first job back in 2001!) & that was the reason I eventually moved to other languages - python as a language is great but the tooling/ecosystem isn't for exactly these issues (or at least weren't at the time, that's also at least a decade+ ago by now). My impression at the time was that using it for server side stuff was fine (i have control of the server and simply install all the right things/versions myself) but packaging it up for end users to install on their desktops/mobile was a huge pain, there was no real easy/simple way to just export a self running installer that you double click (on windows/mac) or an IPA/APK (on ios/android) and end up with a running program the way users were used to from e.g. a bundled .net (at the time using mono, now ms provides cross platforms .net implementations themselves) or native c/c++ executable.

DemocracyFTW 5y ago

This is a solved problem. The community provides a handy system overview[^1] that should be good enough for most cases. [^1]: https://xkcd.com/1987/ https://xkcd.com/1987/

SteadBytes 5y ago
Didn’t even need to open the link to know what it was, thanks for the laugh!

agumonkey 5y ago

It's probably the most voiced complaint these days, unless core devs are deaf, I bet ten solid dollars they're gonna address that soon.

jshen 5y ago
It’s been like this for over a decade. I wouldn’t hold my breath. By comparison, I’m pretty sure the Ruby community adopted bundler over a decade ago.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  Maybe they were busy on other things. Py3k, async. Now these are settled I don't see what other defect needs to be worked on

askvictor 5y ago

I don't know; I've just written something in .net/c# and it's pretty bloddy difficult to deploy.

gkbrk 5y ago
.NET can export self-contained single-file executable that doesn't require any runtime on the target computer/server. Python has solutions like PyInstaller, but it's not built-in and requires building on the same system. In .NET, you can use the built-in tools to export binaries for Linux from Windows.
- byteface 5y ago
  Most windows users have at least 4/5 versions of linux installed on their machine so it's a non issue. They have wsl, a base installed partition, vagrant, a VM and probably docker containers. so running one extra command to gen a windows package isn't a big deal.
- askvictor 5y ago
  Except when you have some specific dependencies/targets that make this difficult. I'm sure I'll get there eventually, but I chose .net for this thinking it would be dead simple, and yet here I am wading through documentation and stackoverflow posts to get to my self-contained single-file executable.
rowanG077 5y ago
.net/C# was one of the easiest to deploy in my experience. Just build a self-contained executable and you're done.

salex89 5y ago

Wouldn't say it better myself. Everything you gain with fast coding you lose on tackling performance issues, GIL, dependency management... Things harder to solve once you're committed to production.

peakaboo 5y ago
It depends very much on what you are doing. Python for big complicated applications is a No for me also but python for extraction jobs in a ETL pipeline or data science tasks is a huge YES.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

matkoniecz 5y ago

Can you be more specific about your claims? What is wrong with Python? > more complicated than any other programming language ever conceived of is definitely untrue. Even if you take only mainstream languages then there are many more annoying to deploy, ones that are more complicated and so on.

jshen 5y ago
Dependency management in python is much worse than most mainstream languages.
- matkoniecz 5y ago
  Here I agree, but it is quite far away from > more complicated than any other programming language ever conceived of
  - gypsyharlot 5y ago
    It was far easier for me to grok monads in Haskell (and it took less time), than to learn how to properly deploy a Python application. Given that monads are often a complaint and testament to the "complexity" of Haskell, I think it's unfair to make the claim that Python is uncomplicated. If you use a language for some period of time, it is very likely that you will have to deal with the tooling at some point.
  - eesmith 5y ago
    I think the "it's" in "it's more complicated" refers to deploying software, not the language itself nor its support packages.

tigr 5y ago

Have you ever tried to deploy an Erlang/OTP application? I find it much harder to do

vland 5y ago
No, but Go and C++ are much easier to deploy.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rcarmo 5y ago

This comment is deceptive. This is a solved problem with virtualenvs. It is why Piku (https://github.com/piku https://github.com/piku) can deploy isolated apps with ease (and actually devotes less than 80 lines of code to the actual Python deployment).

gypsyharlot 5y ago
Thanks for taking the opportunity to advertise your own product, but it doesn't solve the problem.
- rcarmo 5y ago
  It’s not a product. It’s an example of why it isn’t a problem, and it was actually _designed_ around virtualenvs, which is why it’s just a single script (again, not a product).

globular-toast 5y ago

When you say "deploy" do you mean "put it on a webserver"? I've deployed python Web services on to very limited environments that have nothing more than an interpreter. Nowadays I use pip-tools and docker which makes updating trivial. Do you perhaps mean distribution as an app? I've had luck with pyinstaller. There can be fiddly bits but overall it's pretty smooth. It's easier if you are targeting a system with an interpreter, like a Linux distro. Overall I just think you need to know what you're doing. I don't really think this is a bad thing. Maybe you could elaborate on what your difficulties are? From here I just don't see how it's more difficult than anything else.

gypsyharlot 5y ago
Read and learn: https://sedimental.org/the_packaging_gradient.html https://sedimental.org/the_packaging_gradient.html
- globular-toast 5y ago
  Thanks, I know all of that. What made you think I don't?

mrlonglong 5y ago

I recently wrote a python script to handle serial communication and uploading of a bare metal binary to my RPi3, this saves me so much time debugging now that I don't need to swap SD cards continually. Excellent tool.