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What ecosystem are you comparing to? Any C/C++ project with even mild complexity has a good chance of being extremely difficult to build due to either missing

by Ameo 2y ago

What ecosystem are you comparing to? Any C/C++ project with even mild complexity has a good chance of being extremely difficult to build due to either missing libraries that have to be installed manually, system incompatibilities, or compiler issues. Python has like 28 competing package managers and install options, half of which are deprecated or incompatible. I can't even run `pip install` at all anymore on Debian. Even Rust, which is usually great and has modern packaging and built-in dependency management, often has issues building old projects due to breaking changes to the compiler. All this is to try to say that I don't think this is some problem unique to JS at all - but rather a side effect of complex interconnected systems that change often. A big reason Docker and containers in general became so popular was because it makes this problem a lot less difficult by bundling much of the environment into the container, and Docker is very much agnostic to the language and ecosystem running inside it.

ramon156 2y ago
Libraries in the project fixes this whole issue for C/C++. As for compiler issues, just run it with the same compiler. It really shouldn't take more than 20 mins of setup.
- lmm 2y ago
  > Libraries in the project fixes this whole issue for C/C++. Yeah, make sure no-one can ever fix your security vulnerabilities. > As for compiler issues, just run it with the same compiler. And when the same compiler doesn't exist for your new machine? Freezing everything makes things easier in the short term, but much harder in the long term.
elashri 2y ago
You can't use 'pip install' in debian because they chose to do that during the transition from python2 to python3. You should use 'pip3 install' which is provided by package python3-pip from debian. One can argue that this decision should be revised by debian but you should not install packages on system python installation for working into projects. Always use virtual environment.
- Ameo 2y ago
  No that does not work either. You get an error like this: » pip3 install supervisor error: externally-managed-environment × This environment is externally managed ╰─> To install Python packages system-wide, try apt install python3-xyz, where xyz is the package you are trying to install. As far as I can understand, they did this on purpose to dissuade users from installing packages globally to avoid conflicts with other Python environments. Anyway, I'm not trying to argue about if that decision is right or not - I just wanted to use it as an example for my case that the JS ecosystem isn't alone and may even be far from the worst when it comes to this kind of issue.
  - elashri 2y ago
    I understand that, you can use `--break-system-packages` or change configuration `python3 -m pip config set global.break-system-packages true`. Python is different here because in many linux distributions, there are many tools that rely on you system python. Python unlike node is not limited (in practice) to web applications. that's why you have to be more careful. So while I understand you are using this as an example, I don't feel that your comparison is apple to an apple.
    - LamaOfRuin 2y ago
      >Python unlike node is not limited (in practice) to web applications. that's why you have to be more careful. They may or may not be running Node.js specifically, but I believe that many Linux distributions, as well as Windows, include JavaScript code in core applications. I don't see this as particularly different, except that they might choose to assume a single standard system Python that is able to be modified by standard Python development, whereas I would rarely expect that to be the case with however each component chooses to execute JavaScript.
      - elashri 2y ago
treflop 2y ago
Java has a great ecosystem. It’s well thought out and I can compile and run 10 year old projects no problem. In fact, I wish everyone had just copied Java’s model instead of inventing their own worse model. I love Python but it has a terrible package ecosystem with mediocre tooling that has only gotten worse with time. JavaScript has gotten better but it seems they are just re-learning things that were long figured out. When I see new package managers, I just see a list of problems that they forgot to account for. Which I find strange when there have been many package managers that you can learn from. Why are you re-inventing the wheel?
- wink 2y ago
  I am not sure you should put ant or maven as shining examples here, but I am kinda warming up to Gradle, at least without Groovy being involved.
  - ivan_gammel 2y ago
    What do you get from Gradle that Maven cannot offer?
- ahoka 2y ago
  "Java has a great ecosystem. It’s well thought out and I can compile and run 10 year old projects no problem." We just had to workaround breaking changes in a patch version update of Spring Boot. Maybe it was true in 2005, but certainly not the case today. I know of products that are stuck in Java 1.8 and not because they are too lazy to upgrade.
  - cess11 2y ago
    I've been involved in bringing real old Java 1.4 and 6 and whatnot up to 17 and from classic app servers into cloud, can take a bit of work but it's pretty straightforward, mostly switching out deprecated methods to their successors and copying over boilerplate config from similar applications.
    - 2y ago
skeletal88 2y ago
Javascipt is a horrible language because it basically is missing a standard library so you need external dependancies even for the most basic things that are already present in other languages. Python has a very rich standard library. You can do a lot with libc, if you had a c++ Qt project then it would provide you with basically everything you could ever need.
- cies 2y ago
  > Javascipt is a horrible language because it basically is missing a standard library so you need external dependancies even for the most basic things that are already present in other languages That's not the only reason. :) Horrible syntax full of inconsistencies, bolted on type system with TypeScript helps but will always be bolted on, quirks everywhere, as if `null` was not bad enough they also have `undefined`, I can go on. I simply avoid it for anything but small enhancements scripts on otherwise static HTML pages.
  - leptons 2y ago
    It's okay for you to have the opinions you do, but I have zero problems programming very complex systems with Javascript, even without Typescript (before Typescript ever existed). Javascript has always been the easiest language to build anything with for me. And yes, I know a dozen other languages including C, C++, C#, Python, Go, various flavors of Assembly, and more - but Javascript is still my favorite. YMMV.
    - cies 2y ago
      > It's okay for you to have the opinions you do Likewise. > I know [...] C, C++, C#, Python, Go, various flavors of Assembly That's good. But these are all languages that either lack strong typing and or are themselves rather quirky. Only C# and Go stand out, IMHO, as languages that are recently designed. Even Python did not have user defined classes in the first versions, and some things thus feel off (__len__, __init__, etc.). Also C# and Go still have implicit nulls all over the place. Their designs show ignorance for modern language design. Sum-types, explicit null, immutability, sound type systems -- all lacking in all langs you mention. So what languages do have these IMHO "Game changers"? OCaml/ReScript/ReasonML, Haskell, Elm, Rust, Gleam, F#, Scala, Kotlin, ... Those languages really showed _me_ something important: how it could be better. There is another group of languages that also sits on a unique place in the solution space: the LISPs (incl. Racket, Schemes and Clojure). I found it very worth while to learn to program with them as well.
liontwist 2y ago
I check out C projects which have not been updated in 15 years and run make.
- icedchai 2y ago
  I have C code that I wrote in 1995 that still builds. There are many warnings, however.
d3VwsX 2y ago
I don't know if any API does this, but I often wished that APIs I used could mark up just a tiny, tiny subset as @FutureSafe, like the opposite of tagging deprecated code, so that for smaller projects you could stick to only or mostly those parts and know that you can come back after 2 years or 20 years and things still work. Maybe throw in a compiler flag to verify that nothing not-@FutureSafe is used by accident. Sometimes you just want to write something small, once, and not have to actively maintain it forever. Outside of shell-scripts or retro-platform code you can barely write Hello World for any target today and feel confident that it will still run six months from now.

by Ameo 2y ago

ramon156 2y ago

Libraries in the project fixes this whole issue for C/C++. As for compiler issues, just run it with the same compiler. It really shouldn't take more than 20 mins of setup.

lmm 2y ago
> Libraries in the project fixes this whole issue for C/C++. Yeah, make sure no-one can ever fix your security vulnerabilities. > As for compiler issues, just run it with the same compiler. And when the same compiler doesn't exist for your new machine? Freezing everything makes things easier in the short term, but much harder in the long term.

elashri 2y ago

You can't use 'pip install' in debian because they chose to do that during the transition from python2 to python3. You should use 'pip3 install' which is provided by package python3-pip from debian. One can argue that this decision should be revised by debian but you should not install packages on system python installation for working into projects. Always use virtual environment.

Ameo 2y ago
No that does not work either. You get an error like this: » pip3 install supervisor error: externally-managed-environment × This environment is externally managed ╰─> To install Python packages system-wide, try apt install python3-xyz, where xyz is the package you are trying to install. As far as I can understand, they did this on purpose to dissuade users from installing packages globally to avoid conflicts with other Python environments. Anyway, I'm not trying to argue about if that decision is right or not - I just wanted to use it as an example for my case that the JS ecosystem isn't alone and may even be far from the worst when it comes to this kind of issue.
- elashri 2y ago
  I understand that, you can use `--break-system-packages` or change configuration `python3 -m pip config set global.break-system-packages true`. Python is different here because in many linux distributions, there are many tools that rely on you system python. Python unlike node is not limited (in practice) to web applications. that's why you have to be more careful. So while I understand you are using this as an example, I don't feel that your comparison is apple to an apple.
  - LamaOfRuin 2y ago
    >Python unlike node is not limited (in practice) to web applications. that's why you have to be more careful. They may or may not be running Node.js specifically, but I believe that many Linux distributions, as well as Windows, include JavaScript code in core applications. I don't see this as particularly different, except that they might choose to assume a single standard system Python that is able to be modified by standard Python development, whereas I would rarely expect that to be the case with however each component chooses to execute JavaScript.
    - elashri 2y ago

treflop 2y ago

Java has a great ecosystem. It’s well thought out and I can compile and run 10 year old projects no problem. In fact, I wish everyone had just copied Java’s model instead of inventing their own worse model. I love Python but it has a terrible package ecosystem with mediocre tooling that has only gotten worse with time. JavaScript has gotten better but it seems they are just re-learning things that were long figured out. When I see new package managers, I just see a list of problems that they forgot to account for. Which I find strange when there have been many package managers that you can learn from. Why are you re-inventing the wheel?

wink 2y ago
I am not sure you should put ant or maven as shining examples here, but I am kinda warming up to Gradle, at least without Groovy being involved.
- ivan_gammel 2y ago
  What do you get from Gradle that Maven cannot offer?
ahoka 2y ago
"Java has a great ecosystem. It’s well thought out and I can compile and run 10 year old projects no problem." We just had to workaround breaking changes in a patch version update of Spring Boot. Maybe it was true in 2005, but certainly not the case today. I know of products that are stuck in Java 1.8 and not because they are too lazy to upgrade.
- cess11 2y ago
  I've been involved in bringing real old Java 1.4 and 6 and whatnot up to 17 and from classic app servers into cloud, can take a bit of work but it's pretty straightforward, mostly switching out deprecated methods to their successors and copying over boilerplate config from similar applications.
  - 2y ago

skeletal88 2y ago

Javascipt is a horrible language because it basically is missing a standard library so you need external dependancies even for the most basic things that are already present in other languages. Python has a very rich standard library. You can do a lot with libc, if you had a c++ Qt project then it would provide you with basically everything you could ever need.

cies 2y ago
> Javascipt is a horrible language because it basically is missing a standard library so you need external dependancies even for the most basic things that are already present in other languages That's not the only reason. :) Horrible syntax full of inconsistencies, bolted on type system with TypeScript helps but will always be bolted on, quirks everywhere, as if `null` was not bad enough they also have `undefined`, I can go on. I simply avoid it for anything but small enhancements scripts on otherwise static HTML pages.
- leptons 2y ago
  It's okay for you to have the opinions you do, but I have zero problems programming very complex systems with Javascript, even without Typescript (before Typescript ever existed). Javascript has always been the easiest language to build anything with for me. And yes, I know a dozen other languages including C, C++, C#, Python, Go, various flavors of Assembly, and more - but Javascript is still my favorite. YMMV.
  - cies 2y ago
    > It's okay for you to have the opinions you do Likewise. > I know [...] C, C++, C#, Python, Go, various flavors of Assembly That's good. But these are all languages that either lack strong typing and or are themselves rather quirky. Only C# and Go stand out, IMHO, as languages that are recently designed. Even Python did not have user defined classes in the first versions, and some things thus feel off (__len__, __init__, etc.). Also C# and Go still have implicit nulls all over the place. Their designs show ignorance for modern language design. Sum-types, explicit null, immutability, sound type systems -- all lacking in all langs you mention. So what languages do have these IMHO "Game changers"? OCaml/ReScript/ReasonML, Haskell, Elm, Rust, Gleam, F#, Scala, Kotlin, ... Those languages really showed _me_ something important: how it could be better. There is another group of languages that also sits on a unique place in the solution space: the LISPs (incl. Racket, Schemes and Clojure). I found it very worth while to learn to program with them as well.

liontwist 2y ago

I check out C projects which have not been updated in 15 years and run make.

icedchai 2y ago
I have C code that I wrote in 1995 that still builds. There are many warnings, however.

d3VwsX 2y ago

I don't know if any API does this, but I often wished that APIs I used could mark up just a tiny, tiny subset as @FutureSafe, like the opposite of tagging deprecated code, so that for smaller projects you could stick to only or mostly those parts and know that you can come back after 2 years or 20 years and things still work. Maybe throw in a compiler flag to verify that nothing not-@FutureSafe is used by accident. Sometimes you just want to write something small, once, and not have to actively maintain it forever. Outside of shell-scripts or retro-platform code you can barely write Hello World for any target today and feel confident that it will still run six months from now.