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 They seem to always need a very specific (often outdated) version of python, require a bunch of venv nonsense, googling gives tons of outdated info that no longer works, and generally seem incredibly not portable.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?

  • @[email protected]
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    1720 days ago

    Python is hacky, because it hacks. There’s a bunch of ways you can do anything. You can run it on numerous platforms, or even on web assembly. It’s not maintained centrally. Each “app” you find is just somebodies hack project they’re sharing with you for fun.

    • Billegh
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      1120 days ago

      Python is the new Perl

      • @AnUnusualRelic
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        420 days ago

        After using python, I’m of the opinion that perl was much cleaner.

        • magic_lobster_party
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          319 days ago

          Nothing comes close to Perl’s abuse of global variables. Oh you called this function? Take a guess which global variables it will use.

        • Billegh
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          120 days ago

          Yes. Its line noise was of a much higher quality. 😉

      • @[email protected]
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        120 days ago

        On that note, I’m hesitant between writing my scripts in perl or python right now. Bash prevent sharing with Windows peoples… I just want to provide easy wrappers tools that are usually aroud 10 lines of shell, but testers ain’t on linux so they cannot use them.

        I don’t know perl, but each time I interract with pyton’s projects I have a different venv/poetry/… to setup. Forget adout it the next time and nothing is kept easy to reuse.

        • Billegh
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          220 days ago

          Perl isn’t really any better. There aren’t easy tools that do the same thing as venv. They exist, but they are not easy. Plus there are a much larger amount of cpan modules that have c in them than python.