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Is Python's tooling incredibly difficult, or am I just stupid? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/programming

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So I'm no expert, but I have been a hobbyist C and Rust dev for a while now, and I've installed tons of programs from GitHub and whatnot that required manual compilation or other hoops to jump through, but I am constantly befuddled installing python apps. They seem to always need a very specific (often outdated) version of python, require a bunch of venv nonsense, googling gives tons of outdated info that no longer works, and generally seem incredibly not portable. As someone who doesn't work in python, it seems more obtuse than any other language's ecosystem. Why is it like this?

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[–] FizzyOrange 31 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Yes it's terrible. The only hope on the horizon is uv. It's significantly better than all the other tooling (Poetry, pip, pipenv, etc.) so I think it has a good chance of reducing the options to just Pip or uv at least.

But I fully expect the Python Devs to ignore it, and maybe even make life deliberately difficult for it like they did for static analysers. They have some strange priorities sometimes.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I like the idea of uv, but I hate the name. Libuv is already a very popular C library, and used in everything from NodeJS to Julia to Python (through the popular uvloop module). Every time I see someone mention uv I get confused and think they're talking about uvloop until I remember the Astral project, and then reconfirm to myself how much I disapprove of their name choice.

[–] FizzyOrange 2 points 1 month ago

I don't think libuv is really that popular, nor is it that confusing.

But I do agree it's not a very good name. "Rye" is a much better name. Probably too late anyway.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

UV is a game changer for python.

I hated the tooling until I found it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

uv is good but it needs a little more time in the oven.

For the moment I would definitely recommend poetry if you are not a library developer. Poetry's biggest sin is it's atrocious performance but it has most of the features you need to work with Python apps today.

[–] FizzyOrange 3 points 1 month ago

Why do you say it needs more time in the oven? I've had zero issues with it as a drop-in replacement for Pip in a large commercial project, which is an extremely impressive achievement. (And it was 10x faster.)

I tried Poetry once and it failed to resolve dependencies on the first thing I tried it on. If anything Poetry needs more time in the oven. It also wasn't 10x faster.