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 They seem to always need a very specific (often outdated) version of python, require a bunch of venv nonsense, googling gives tons of outdated info that no longer works, and generally seem incredibly not portable.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?
I’m no Python expert either and yeah, from an outsider’s perspective it seems needlessly confusing.
easy_installthat’s never been easy,pipthat should absolutely be put on a Performance Improvement Plan, and now thisvenvnonsense.You can criticize javascript’s ridiculous dependencies all you want (left-pad?), but one thing that they absolutely got right is how to manage them. Everything’s in
node_modulesand that’s it. Yeah, you might get eleven copies of left-pad on your system, but you know what you NEVER get? Version conflicts between projects you’re working on.Seriously. Those are EXACTLY the thoughts I had after I was forced to deal with Python after a ton of time writing projects in JS.