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Comment by isoprophlex

2 years ago

> Our low performance is not an existential threat to the business.

11 years later, nothing has changed.

Just to name one example of something I ran into last year...: Install the 'az' Azure CLI into your docker image? Boom, 1.4 GB extra space wasted! Why you ask? Well, for one, every subcommand bundles its own Python runtime.

15 comments

isoprophlex

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Dalewyn  2 years ago

That is hardly valid criticism when Linux's answer for binary distribution is for them to bundle their everything (containers).

  • hamandcheese  2 years ago

    "Linux" does not have a singular answer for binary distribution. Docker is one of many, with differing trade-offs.

  • alexey-salmin  2 years ago

    Docker is horrible as a binary distribution method and luckily it's rarely used as such. Usually it's the apt, pip etc. Docker is for deployment not distribution.

Baldbvrhunter  2 years ago

welcome to venv, not just windows

  • echelon  2 years ago

    Python really needs to fix this problem. The language is so full of warts that it's almost akin to the modern PHP.

    I'm hoping for a Python version that makes this zen item [1] the number one priority:

    > "There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it."

    [1] https://peps.python.org/pep-0020/

    • TheCapeGreek  2 years ago

      As a PHP developer I refuse to use Python because I know how unwieldy it's felt whenever I've had to do serious work with it.

      To each their own, but even PHP's setup these days is way ahead.

      1 reply →

    • raverbashing  2 years ago

      For real

      Where there is a choice there is a feud being born. And even worse the most basic it is

      At least we now have pyproject.toml, now we need stuff that upgrades the packages in a non-braindead way (and a lot of this is to blame on the maintainers)

      If there's one advantage on the "leftpad" way of doing things is that if js had as bad dependency resolution as python all js developers would have been unalived by dependency hell

  • semi-extrinsic  2 years ago

    Controversial opinion: the insistence on the venv bullshit is the stupidest decision made in programming languages in the past twenty years, and it is entirely unnecessary.

    I've used Python for more than a decade on Arch Linux, across many machines at home and work. For essentially all of that time, I've been "sudo pip install"-ing to my heart's content. The number of times this has actually caused problems with my own Python scripts is less than the number of times I've had to help colleagues figure out venv bullshit in the past six months alone. The number of times that "sudo pip install" has caused breakage of anything except my own scripts is zero in ten years.

    AFAICT the Python core team has essentially no understanding of the level of sophistication and the actual pain points experienced by 95% of Python users. Python is the software equivalent of duct tape, and it is used accordingly. Putting the duct tape in a box that is hard to open and covered with warning labels is not a meaningful improvement.