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> the Python intepreter has a slow startup time. This really depends on your perspective. Sure, it's a lot slower than running a native binary. But it's still

> the Python intepreter has a slow startup time. This really depends on your perspective. Sure, it's a lot slower than running a native binary. But it's still fast enough for interactive tools that you run often. If you compare that to java tools, for example, which take seconds if not dozens of seconds to start (gradle, I'm looking at you!), python is far better.

js2 5y ago
> (gradle, I'm looking at you!) gradle has pretty much the worst ergonomics of any developer tool I've ever used[1], so that's a pretty low bar. [1] e.g. "Something went wrong. Re-run with -debug or -info. Now here's 5000 lines of useless stack traces that won't help at all." Nevermind an ecosystem of plugins where it's not clear where the DSL ends and API starts, and makes it virtually impossible to locate the actual source of an error message, if you get one at all.
- mumblemumble 4y ago
  This time last year, I was deep into writing Gradle plugins at work. Gradle's entire architecture is the best argument I have ever seen for why you should never use a big blob of shared mutable state when all you really needed to do was pass discrete values up and down the call stack. Compare with Bazel. I appreciate why people bounce off of many of its strictures. But when you just look at the architecture and what it takes to develop for it, it's amazing how much easier it is to grok, while achieving a similar level of flexibility.
IshKebab 4y ago
> it's still fast enough for Interactive tools that you run often. Oh really? https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/OxidationPlan https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/OxidationPlan > chg's very existence is because we need hg to be a native binary in order to avoid Python startup overhead. If hg weren't a Python script, we wouldn't need chg to be a separate program.
- bhandziuk 4y ago
  god I love Hg over git. I don't understand why git is more popular.
  - dralley 4y ago
    It's pretty easy to understand. Github.
    - mumblemumble 4y ago
      I suspect that, back in the day, Bitbucket (which was originally hg-only) might have won out over GitHub if Git hadn't also had the huge publicity boost that comes with being written by Linus.

js2 5y ago

> (gradle, I'm looking at you!) gradle has pretty much the worst ergonomics of any developer tool I've ever used[1], so that's a pretty low bar. [1] e.g. "Something went wrong. Re-run with -debug or -info. Now here's 5000 lines of useless stack traces that won't help at all." Nevermind an ecosystem of plugins where it's not clear where the DSL ends and API starts, and makes it virtually impossible to locate the actual source of an error message, if you get one at all.

mumblemumble 4y ago
This time last year, I was deep into writing Gradle plugins at work. Gradle's entire architecture is the best argument I have ever seen for why you should never use a big blob of shared mutable state when all you really needed to do was pass discrete values up and down the call stack. Compare with Bazel. I appreciate why people bounce off of many of its strictures. But when you just look at the architecture and what it takes to develop for it, it's amazing how much easier it is to grok, while achieving a similar level of flexibility.

IshKebab 4y ago

> it's still fast enough for Interactive tools that you run often. Oh really? https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/OxidationPlan https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/OxidationPlan > chg's very existence is because we need hg to be a native binary in order to avoid Python startup overhead. If hg weren't a Python script, we wouldn't need chg to be a separate program.

bhandziuk 4y ago
god I love Hg over git. I don't understand why git is more popular.
- dralley 4y ago
  It's pretty easy to understand. Github.
  - mumblemumble 4y ago
    I suspect that, back in the day, Bitbucket (which was originally hg-only) might have won out over GitHub if Git hadn't also had the huge publicity boost that comes with being written by Linus.