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I get that sense too. Probably does work awesome if you're inside. But man it's a mess when they externalize stuff. Just one example: their cloud platform CLI i

I get that sense too. Probably does work awesome if you're inside. But man it's a mess when they externalize stuff. Just one example: their cloud platform CLI includes an entire python installation and takes 1.7G on disk, just to make API calls...

jen20 3y ago
I have never understood why cloud providers seem to think it is OK to write their CLIs in Python. The AWS one is too, and the Azure one went from Node.js to Python some time ago.
- anonymous-panda 3y ago
  Packaging and stability reasons. Same for why it’s a 1.7gb install - probably where they landed after having tons of support issues on some random Python version they didn’t test or some issue with a dependency that had that issue. Freezing the entire set of artifacts is more stable and Python lets you move pretty quick. I can’t speak to why nodejs vs Python though - maybe Python is easier to embed?
  - pests 3y ago
    What? They only get package and stability because they include the runtime. If they just went with a compiled language they could distribute native binaries and have actual packaging and stability.
    - anonymous-panda 3y ago
      Yes, but it’s not just a single metric. Another is how easy it is for them to hire productive members of the team and how much that costs them - middling Python developers churning out fine”ish” code are cheaper than Rust developers doing the same. It’s hard to find a language where you can be as productive as a developer in Python that also has AOT compilation to generate standalone binaries. Tldr: there’s multiple factors to consider here and it’s more interesting to understand the pressures that cause the decisions, especially if you want to try to create a world where different decisions are made.
      - jen20 3y ago
        > It’s hard to find a language where you can be as productive as a developer in Python that also has AOT compilation to generate standalone binaries. Outside specific cases around machine learning, it’s really not: Go is that language. It’s not like each of those platforms doesn’t have to have a similar team that understand Go anyway (for their SDK), so they could save their customers the abject pain of Python dependency management by just writing their CLIs using it.
  - twelfthnight 3y ago
    Yeah, I imagine that was the decision calculus. "Instead of spending some more effort to save millions of unnecessary downloads of python's runtime using a different language, let's just bundle Python!" I wouldn't be surprised if it was version 2.7 too...
  - jen20 3y ago
    Of course, writing them in Go would solve all of these problems while producing packages which are much smaller.
- twelfthnight 3y ago
  There probably is a sense in which the API's are constantly changing, so maybe an interpreted language might make sense? I imagine there has to be a better way to do with with Go or Rust though (even lua?) for a smaller binary.
  - candiodari 3y ago
    Google python binaries are more akin to docker or even vm images, even if the actual technology used predates docker and even linux VMs. They contain something like a slimmed-down linux distribution, not just a binary. EXTREME predictability (e.g. as never ever using the system's libssl), in trade for huge binaries. They go pretty damn far in this: you won't catch a Google binary even using most of libc.
- jyap 3y ago
  It makes “sense” based on the domain of the cloud provider being DevOps teams who are maintaining and using these CLI tools. Ie. What they use day to day. For anything more advanced they offer language specific SDKs in Rust, Swift, Kolton, etc… For example integrating storage in an iOS app.
marcyb5st 3y ago
Did you install all the components? Because if so you also installed emulators for the pubsub and big table (maybe others, I don't remember) which explain the big footprint.

jen20 3y ago

I have never understood why cloud providers seem to think it is OK to write their CLIs in Python. The AWS one is too, and the Azure one went from Node.js to Python some time ago.

anonymous-panda 3y ago
Packaging and stability reasons. Same for why it’s a 1.7gb install - probably where they landed after having tons of support issues on some random Python version they didn’t test or some issue with a dependency that had that issue. Freezing the entire set of artifacts is more stable and Python lets you move pretty quick. I can’t speak to why nodejs vs Python though - maybe Python is easier to embed?
- pests 3y ago
  What? They only get package and stability because they include the runtime. If they just went with a compiled language they could distribute native binaries and have actual packaging and stability.
  - anonymous-panda 3y ago
    Yes, but it’s not just a single metric. Another is how easy it is for them to hire productive members of the team and how much that costs them - middling Python developers churning out fine”ish” code are cheaper than Rust developers doing the same. It’s hard to find a language where you can be as productive as a developer in Python that also has AOT compilation to generate standalone binaries. Tldr: there’s multiple factors to consider here and it’s more interesting to understand the pressures that cause the decisions, especially if you want to try to create a world where different decisions are made.
    - jen20 3y ago
      > It’s hard to find a language where you can be as productive as a developer in Python that also has AOT compilation to generate standalone binaries. Outside specific cases around machine learning, it’s really not: Go is that language. It’s not like each of those platforms doesn’t have to have a similar team that understand Go anyway (for their SDK), so they could save their customers the abject pain of Python dependency management by just writing their CLIs using it.
- twelfthnight 3y ago
  Yeah, I imagine that was the decision calculus. "Instead of spending some more effort to save millions of unnecessary downloads of python's runtime using a different language, let's just bundle Python!" I wouldn't be surprised if it was version 2.7 too...
- jen20 3y ago
  Of course, writing them in Go would solve all of these problems while producing packages which are much smaller.
twelfthnight 3y ago
There probably is a sense in which the API's are constantly changing, so maybe an interpreted language might make sense? I imagine there has to be a better way to do with with Go or Rust though (even lua?) for a smaller binary.
- candiodari 3y ago
  Google python binaries are more akin to docker or even vm images, even if the actual technology used predates docker and even linux VMs. They contain something like a slimmed-down linux distribution, not just a binary. EXTREME predictability (e.g. as never ever using the system's libssl), in trade for huge binaries. They go pretty damn far in this: you won't catch a Google binary even using most of libc.
jyap 3y ago
It makes “sense” based on the domain of the cloud provider being DevOps teams who are maintaining and using these CLI tools. Ie. What they use day to day. For anything more advanced they offer language specific SDKs in Rust, Swift, Kolton, etc… For example integrating storage in an iOS app.

marcyb5st 3y ago

Did you install all the components? Because if so you also installed emulators for the pubsub and big table (maybe others, I don't remember) which explain the big footprint.