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It’s a small tool shop building a tiny part of the Python ecosystem, let’s not overstate their importance. They burned through their VC money and needed an exit
by throwaway63467 7mo ago
It’s a small tool shop building a tiny part of the Python ecosystem, let’s not overstate their importance. They burned through their VC money and needed an exit and CLI tool chains are hyped now for LLMs, but this mostly sounds like an acquihire to me. Dev tools are among the hardest things to monetize with very few real winners, so good for them to get a good exit.
- druml 7mo agoSmall tool shop, burning VC money, true. "Tiny part of the Python ecosystem" is an understatement given how much impact uv has made alone.
- Hamuko 7mo agoDo you have any statistics for that?
- pm90 7mo agoanecdotally every place ive worked at has switched over and never looked back.
- shawnwall 7mo agobeen in the python game a long time and i've seen so many tools in this space come and go over the years. i still rely on good ol pip and have had no issues. that said, we utilize mypy and ruff, and have moved to pyproject etc to remotely keep up with the times.
- jitl 7mo agouv solved it, it will be the only tool people use in 2 more years. if you’re a python shop / expert then you can do pip etc but uv turned incidental python + deps from a huge PITA for the rest of us, to It Just Works simplicity on the same level or better than Golang.
- 1718627440 7mo agoI don't want software on my computer, that just downloads and installs random stuff. This is the job of the OS in particular the package manager.
- mirekrusin 7mo agoThen don't use it?
- QuantumNomad_ 7mo agoWhat’s the point of constraining oneself to what is in the OS package manager? I like to keep my dependencies up to date. The versions in the OS package manager are much older. And let’s say you constrain yourself to your OS package manager. What about the people on different distros? Their package managers are unlikely to have the exact same versions of your deps that your OS has.
- 1718627440 7mo ago> What’s the point of constraining oneself to what is in the OS package manager? I like to keep my dependencies up to date. The versions in the OS package manager are much older. I favor stability and the stripping of unwanted features (e.g. telemetry) by my OS vendor over cutting edge software. If I really need that I install it into /usr/local, that it what this is for after all. > And let’s say you constrain yourself to your OS package manager. What about the people on different distros? Their package managers are unlikely to have the exact same versions of your deps that your OS has. This is a reason to select the OS. Software shouldn't require exact versions, but should stick to stable interfaces.
- zbentley 7mo agoDo you not use non-OS package managers? If not, do you develop software with source dependencies (go, java, node, rust, python)? If so, how do you handle acquiring those dependencies—by hand or using a tool?
- 7mo ago
- tomrod 7mo agoGeospatial tends to be the Achilles heel for python projects for me. Fiona is a wiley beast of a package, and GDAL too. Conda helped some but was always so slow. Pip almost uniformly fails in this area for me.
- crimsoneer 7mo agoYup, the fact UV just installed geopandas out of the box with no issues blew my mind.
- _moof 7mo agoSame. It's game-changing - leaps and bounds above every previous attempt to make Python's packaging, dependency management, and dev workflow easy. I don't know anyone who has tried uv and not immediately thrown every other tool out the window.
- macNchz 7mo agoI use uv here and there but have a bunch of projects using regular pip with pip-tools to do a requirements.in -> requirements.txt as a lockfile workflow that I've never seen enough value in converting over. uv is clearly much faster but that's a pretty minor consideration unless I were for some reason changing project dependencies all day long. Perhaps it never grabbed me as much because I've been running basically everything in Docker for years now, which takes care of Python versioning issues and caches the dependency install steps, so they only take a long time if they've changed. I also like containers for all of the other project setup and environment scaffolding stuff they roll up, e.g. having a consistently working GDAL environment available instantly for a project I haven't worked on in a long time.
- imp0cat 7mo ago2 things: First, you can (and should) replace your `pip install` with `uv pip install` for instant speed boost. This matters even for Docker builds. Second, you can use uv to build and install to a separate venv in a Docker container and then, thanks to the wonders of multistage Docker builds, copy that venv to a new container and have a fully working minimal image in no time, with almost no effort.
- jengland 7mo agouv has almost 2x the number of monthly downloads Poetry has. - https://pypistats.org/packages/poetry https://pypistats.org/packages/poetry - https://pypistats.org/packages/uv https://pypistats.org/packages/uv In the 2024 Python developer survey, 18% of the ecosystem used Poetry. When I opened this manifold question[0], I'm pretty sure uv was about half of Poetry downloads. Estimating from these numbers, probably about 30% of the ecosystem is using `uv` now. We'll get better numbers when the 2025 Python developer survey is published. Also see this: https://biggo.com/news/202510140723_uv-overtakes-pip-in-ci-usage https://biggo.com/news/202510140723_uv-overtakes-pip-in-ci-u... [0]: https://manifold.markets/JeremiahEngland/will-uv-surpass-poetry-in-monthly-p https://manifold.markets/JeremiahEngland/will-uv-surpass-poe...
- rob 7mo agoJust a tiny project with over 100 million downloads every month, over 4 million every day. No big deal. Just a small shop, don't overstate its importance. https://pypistats.org/packages/uv https://pypistats.org/packages/uv
- throwaway63467 7mo agoThe “requests” package gets downloaded one billion times every month, should that be a multi billion dollar VC company as well? It’s a package manager and other neat tooling, it’s great but it’s hardly the essence of what makes Python awesome, it’s one of the many things that makes this ecosystem flourish. If OpenAI would enshittify it people would just fork or move on, that’s all I’m saying, it’s not in any way a single point of failure for the Python ecosystem.
- druml 7mo ago> the essence of what makes Python awesome This is not the point of uv or any good package manager. The point is what prevents Python to suck. For a long time package management had been horrible in Python compared what you could see in other languages.
- FuckButtons 7mo agoSure, but if tomorrow uv and ruff ceased to exist, we could all go back to any number of other solutions.
- mastermage 7mo agoI dont wanna go back to micromamba, pixi is my happy place (which builds on uv).
- tomrod 7mo agoMaybe you could. I would stare longingly into the void, wondering if I can ever work another python project after having experienced uv, ruff, and ty. Such an outcome would make me wonder regarding the wisdom of "It is better to have love and lost than to have never loved at all."
- swexbe 7mo agoVC money bailing out other VCs. A tale as old as time.
- victorbjorklund 7mo agoThey have some nice ideas. But if they turn to shit you can just fork their tools and use that instead.
- __MatrixMan__ 7mo agoAgreed. Maybe there needs to be some nonprofit watchdog which helps identify those cases in their early stages and helps bootstrap open forks. I'd fund to a sort of open capture protection savings account if I believed it would help ensure continuity of support from the things I rely on.
- TeMPOraL 7mo agoRight. If anything, this "tiny part" has pretty much taken over Python and turned it from OSS BDFL language into a company-backed one (like Erlang, Scala, C#).
- oytis 7mo agoI am still not sure why everyone jumped on uv. Sure, it's quicker than pip, but an installation rarely takes so long as to become annoying. Anyway, pip is still there, so whatever impact they have made can be rolled back if they try to pull the rug
- duskdozer 7mo agoI'm not sure but it seems to be because of dependency management behaviors I find confusing. Like, I found out that apparently people or packages would just do this `pip freeze > requirements.txt` or otherwise just not pay attention to what version limitations there are. It's not something that I ever really ran into much though
- throwaw12 7mo agouv and ruff is not tiny part anymore, its growing fast
- Syntaf 7mo agoNot to mention their language server + type checker `ty` is incredible. We moved our extremely large python codebase over from MyPy and it's an absolute game changer. It's so fast in fact that we just added `ty check` to our pre-commit hooks where MyPy previously had runtimes of 150+ seconds _and_ a mess of bugs around their caching.
- woodruffw 7mo agoAs a point of information: Astral did not, in fact, burn through its VC money. I agree that dev tools are difficult to monetize, though. (Source: I'm an Astral employee.)
- OriginalMrPink 7mo ago[dead]
- benterix 7mo agoFinally someone competent to answer the crucial question. Taken into account the enormous amount of excellent work you did, and the fact that dev tools are hard to monetize, what was your strategy?
- woodruffw 7mo agoYou can find some resources on our strategy in previous blog posts, like this one on pyx[1]. [1]: https://astral.sh/blog/introducing-pyx https://astral.sh/blog/introducing-pyx
- ontouchstart 7mo agoAre you going to join codex team as well? I am curious about how the codex code base will evolve after you guys joined. It is going to affect Python/Rust toolchains tremendously.
- cj 7mo agoCheck this HN thread from 8 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44358216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44358216
- nullhole 7mo ago> As a point of order: Astral did not, in fact, burn through its VC money. That's a point of information, not a point of order.
- __mharrison__ 7mo agouv is the best thing to happen to package management in Python. It's not perfect, but it is light-years better than what preceded it. I jumped ship to it and have not looked back. (So have many of my clients).
- gigatexal 7mo agoUv is the defacto way to do projects. Ty is really really good. Ruff is the defacto linter. I mean they’ve earned a lot of clout.
- giancarlostoro 7mo ago> Dev tools are among the hardest things to monetize with very few real winners, so good for them to get a good exit. I'm on the fence about cancelling my JetBrains subscription I've had for nearly 10 years now. I just don't use it much. Zed and Claude Code cover all my needs, the only thing I need is a serious DataGrip alternative, but I might just sit down with Claude and build one for myself.
- paddy_m 7mo agoWhat do you want in your datagrip alternative. I'm working on some stuff, and interested to hear how people approach data with LLMs
- mikenikles 7mo agoI'm curious what you think of https://seaquel.app https://seaquel.app as a DataGrip alternative. It's a project I'm working on to build a database management product I've always wanted. I spend way too much time obsessing over UX but hope people appreciate it :).
- dajt 7mo agoI've been using DBeaver CE since I lost my DataGrip license.
- raincole 7mo ago> tiny part of the Python ecosystem https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/
- scuff3d 7mo agoThat's kind of like saying Cargo is a small part of the Rust ecosystem. It's not there yet, but it's getting there.
- anentropic 7mo agoThat was my feeling - more than 'owning' uv etc I could see this as being about getting people onboard who had a proven track record delivering developer tooling that was loved enough to get wide adoption
- 19205817 7mo agoThey were hyped here without any pushback. Maybe OpenAI thinks the Astral folks will now evangelize and foist Codex and ChatGPT onto the open source "community". People need to be very careful about resisting. OpenAI wants to make everyone unemployed, works with the Pentagon, steals IP, and copyright whistleblowers end up getting killed under mysterious circumstances.
- insane_dreamer 7mo agogiven that they delivered the goods I would not say they were "hyped"
- jitl 7mo agoEvery uv-related post here had a few people going "i don't want to use VC funded stuff!! what about rug pull!!", although perhaps they were drowned out eventually all the people (like me) going "uv is fantastic and solves 15 years of python packaging hell"
- pjmlp 7mo agoMaybe it is a GenX, Boomer thingie, but setting a couple of environment variables, or multiple virtual envs hardly felt as packaging hell.
- jitl 7mo agoPerhaps you and I are POSIXly Correct people who easily stay on the golden path, but for the average Python user the hell is all too common: https://xkcd.com/1987/ https://xkcd.com/1987/
- JimDabell 7mo ago> They were hyped here without any pushback. This is untrue. People frequently complained that they were VC funded and used it to justify mistrust. Take this discussion, for example. Completely dominated by the topic. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44892209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44892209
- screye 7mo agoUV is arguably this decade's most important addition to the python ecosystem. They are a small, but they are important.
- bbor 7mo agoThis is so dystopian… they built something that worked and now are being “acquihired” into oblivion, and we’re supposed to be happy about it? I’m glad a few of the early people just got rich I guess, but it seems like a terrible system overall.