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Conda may suck in some ways but it solved a big problem; installing software without root accesss. It effectively removed os dependencies allowing for operatin

Conda may suck in some ways but it solved a big problem; installing software without root accesss. It effectively removed os dependencies allowing for operating system changes. HPC operating systems were effectively ossified prior to that. Notebooks on the other hand are a god damned abomination. Obligatory past discussion; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17856700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17856700

bluedino 4y ago
Couldn't you just do that with pip?
- mattpallissard 4y ago
  No conda is for dependencies of your python environment. You need python itself, shell utilities, and some dependencies are dynamically linked. Think package manager for the `--prefix` compilation flag AND `LD_LIBRARY_PATH`
  - myhf 4y ago
    conda can also be used to manage python packages, but its dependency solver is very slow and sometimes completely fails. Once you have created a conda environment, it is usually much more practical to install packages with pip or mamba.
abdullahkhalids 4y ago
> Notebooks on the other hand are a god damned abomination. I completely disagree. Notebooks are an excellent way of doing literate programming, because they go beyond plain text, and integrate richly formatted text, tables, figures, videos with code. This is excellent where the human is following a line of reasoning, and offloading the computation to the computer. The reasoning is explained via the non-code, made concrete via the code cells, and its effects shown via the code cells. Of course, people can abuse the conveniences of the medium to write really bad code, and follow some really bad practices. But that doesn't mean the medium is bad. In fact, I think if you forced people to stop using notebooks, their productivity would drop by quite a bit. Notebooks are tool for thought [1]. The solution is to teach them better practices, and provide better tools within the notebook interface that will help people write better code. [1] https://numinous.productions/ttft/ https://numinous.productions/ttft/

bluedino 4y ago

Couldn't you just do that with pip?

mattpallissard 4y ago
No conda is for dependencies of your python environment. You need python itself, shell utilities, and some dependencies are dynamically linked. Think package manager for the `--prefix` compilation flag AND `LD_LIBRARY_PATH`
- myhf 4y ago
  conda can also be used to manage python packages, but its dependency solver is very slow and sometimes completely fails. Once you have created a conda environment, it is usually much more practical to install packages with pip or mamba.

abdullahkhalids 4y ago

> Notebooks on the other hand are a god damned abomination. I completely disagree. Notebooks are an excellent way of doing literate programming, because they go beyond plain text, and integrate richly formatted text, tables, figures, videos with code. This is excellent where the human is following a line of reasoning, and offloading the computation to the computer. The reasoning is explained via the non-code, made concrete via the code cells, and its effects shown via the code cells. Of course, people can abuse the conveniences of the medium to write really bad code, and follow some really bad practices. But that doesn't mean the medium is bad. In fact, I think if you forced people to stop using notebooks, their productivity would drop by quite a bit. Notebooks are tool for thought [1]. The solution is to teach them better practices, and provide better tools within the notebook interface that will help people write better code. [1] https://numinous.productions/ttft/ https://numinous.productions/ttft/