Comment by ryandvm

13 days ago

What's `uv`? Oh, another Python package manager. Is it a new lunar cycle already?

Not to shit on anyone's hard work, but how is Python the only popular language whose package management situation is always actively getting more complicated?

I used to love Python, but I won't touch it anymore because I just don't have it in me to learn what the new idiomatic package management practices are in any given Python ecosystem.

For any aspiring language designers out there - take good notes about what happens if you don't bake package management into the official tooling.

A lot of very experienced people in the Python world are taking uv very seriously.

Sometimes if you reinvent the wheel enough times you eventually get a round one.

> how is Python the only popular language whose package management situation is always actively getting more complicated?

I don't think it is? Did javascript suddenly get boring when I looked away?

> I used to love Python, but I won't touch it anymore because I just don't have it in me to learn what the new idiomatic package management practices are in any given Python ecosystem.

While people keep trying to invent newer better options, you can in fact manage 95% of cases with just pip+virtualenv. (Granted, the other 5% is a quick descent to madness, usually courtesy of non-Python integrations.)

  • the problem isn't virtualenv itself, it's that using one is cumbersome. python-wool, that I wrote, works around this but still requires technical understanding before you're fully able to use it. you're right that those are 95% of the way there, but that last 5% is where people get lost.