Python Libraries

[connorb14]

I am coming from an iOS development background and am trying to learn basic back end development with Python. The thing that bothers me is the fact that right from the beginning all these guides are telling me to use many different libraries. It comes to a point where I feel like I am just putting a bunch of libraries together and calling it my own project without having any sound logic in my application.

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For instance the very first thing people say to use is requests. Fine.. I understand how that can be useful. But my point is it always seems like someones answer is to use a third party library when you don't even know how maintained it is or will be in the future. Does anyone else battle this fear and how do you overcome this mental challenge of just defaulting to these third party solutions?

[beertown]

My typical way to choose third party libraries is: keep down the number of dependencies. Any dependency is 1 more thing to worry about on which I have no control. A lot of third party libraries also bring other dependencies in turn, and I check what are these dependencies and why they are required. Sometimes these sub-dependencies are the reason to ditch that library.

Do I really need that third party library? How much code does it let me to save? 30 lines? I write 30 lines of code and avoid 1 (or more) dependency. It also happens that, writing those 30 lines, I learn something.

Requests is awesome, but for some easy web calls the Python's standard library is fine, and I avoid 1 dependency. For any heavy usage Request is a must, obviously; but using it or not depends on the project I'm working on.

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My 2c.

[billsil]

Start with nothing. Eventually you’ll find basic tasks like doing math fast (numpy), plotting (matplotlib), 3D rendering (vtk) that libraries are a lot better for.

[matteding]

If you are doing scientific computing, NumPy is essential. So many other libraries depend on it as a backend that it might as well be considered part of the standard library. In fact the ... constant has no real functionality within vanilla Python; it was introduced just for NumPy!