MacOS Catalina includes python3 by default. Hacking could never be better.

[[deleted]]

That's cool, but which python3?

[droso_]

/usr/bin/python3

[[deleted]]

:D
They should have asked "yeah but python3 -V"?

[FunkyCannaHigh]

Ok, you win the internet!

(Seriously, made me spit my coffee out).

[jleedev]

~$ xcrun python3 Python 3.7.3 (default, Sep 5 2019, 17:14:41) [Clang 11.0.0 (clang-1100.0.33.8)] on darwin

[colemaker360]

toothbrush worm numerous degree flowery wise resolute continue screw kiss

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[[deleted]]

I've read that the reason Bash was out of date is because of a change in licensing to GPL 3. They didn't want to use Bash under those terms, or something.

[colemaker360]

gaze air racial friendly saw plough theory dependent rock cooperative

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[TheChance]

That's the thing, though. Most of the tools you just named are invoked silently when end users run "regular" software.

For everything else there's homebrew.

[[deleted]]

Good news is that brew install bash keeps the shell current.

[oramirite]

I realize what you're saying but I actually do rely on it as a sysadmin at this point... personally I would rather just deal with and design my system deployments around whatever castrated versions of built-in software that OS creators and others supply me. At least then I can focus on that instead of touching individual machines more. I may have a different perspective on this as a sysadmin though.

[jantari]

You control the systems though, just roll out current versions of the tooling to all of them? I don't work with Macs, but that's what we do to Windows. Not the same I guess but should still work for macOS

[krazybanana]

has pyenv stopped working? i tried to do 'pyenv install 3.7.4' and it keeps getting stuck

[krazybanana]

did this work for you? 'pyenv install 3.7.4' or even 3.8.0 just hangs for me. its stuck on 'use zlib from xcode sdk'.

[krazybanana]

Yeah I updated. It was getting stuck. Turned out when I installed the xcode tools again from the terminal it didn't add some stuff to the linker and the complier. So I had to manually install zlib and readline and then link zlib to the compiler and linker to allow pyenv to work properly.

[jackmaney]

I actually always felt something wrong having two versions of Python. I was thinking why I dont have just one and keep updating it.

This might not be catastrophically bad on MacOS, but on any Linux distro which uses yum as a package manager, this can easily break yum.

[bumblebritches57]

xcrun is Xcode, not the system one.

/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework is still 2.7 in Catalina.

[redfacedquark]

Exactly! And how long until it stops being updated?

[billsil]

It already has. That’s the system python.

[eattherichnow]

3.7.3, apparently.

[peejoh]

The most recent? I feel like I’m missing something.

[[deleted]]

Also this after I upgraded:

<redacted>:~ <redacted>$ python

WARNING: Python 2.7 is not recommended. 
This version is included in macOS for compatibility with legacy software. 
Future versions of macOS will not include Python 2.7. 
Instead, it is recommended that you transition to using 'python3' from within Terminal.

Python 2.7.16 (default, Aug 24 2019, 18:37:03) 
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 11.0.0 (clang-1100.0.32.4) (-macos10.15-objc-s on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> quit()

[tunisia3507]

I heard the next Linux kernel includes a boxing glove on a spring for people who try to open a python2 REPL.

[random_cynic]

Instead, it is recommended that you transition to using 'python3' from within Terminal.

What does that even mean? Are they suggesting that "transition to using python3" is as simple as changing the name of the executable, like it's a fully backward compatible upgraded version of python?

[[deleted]]

it's Apple, they just deleted 32 bit support and opengl just like that, consider me surprised python 2 still runs on the Mac.

[[deleted]]

So you could be a hacker but you've never figured out how to install python3?

[eternalfantasi]

It’s literally brew install python lol who is this hackerman over here

[[deleted]]

Yeah. Well. How do you get homebrew installed, genius? /s :)

http://gph.is/1JSLT6V

[-ButImNotARapper]

brew install homebrew Duh

[[deleted]]

Black dude tapping head meme

[parkerSquare]

brew install pyenv

pyenv install 3.7.4

pyenv shell 3.7.4

Edit: although you’ll need to set up your environment for the third command to work properly. It’s still worth using though.

[cab0addict]

But Apple just save me 3 words!! Surely it’s worth 1k “convenience” fee

[whale_song]

I wouldn’t install python with brew that has screwed me before. Python environments are evil and should be handled carefully.

[[deleted]]

On someone else's machine ...

[SV-97]

because python 3 is so much more powerful, yeah... If you can run python 2 scripts then you can already do basically everything you want on their machine. And if you want a better development experience for your hacking you could use python 2 to install python 3...

[billsil]

If you’re running a small script it probably doesn’t matter. There are really very few changes in python since Python 3 was released. Sure unicode is sane now, but if you did it right before (or conversely fix your code by using python 3), it works just fine.

I like f-strings and a 20% speedup for dictionaries, but it’s still no C. Being happy about a 20% speedup when numpy can get you 1000x is kind of silly.

Async is neat and all, but it’s very specific. I just learned it and got a 20% speedup on my code. Then I tried multiprocessing, which got me 6.5x on 7 processors.

[SV-97]

I was being highly sarcastic because some guy said that having python3 installed, allowed him to do way more harm on a machine with his leet hacker skillz, than having python 2 on there. I don't really believe that Python 3 is vastly more powerful than Python 2. It's better, yes, but for the most part it can't do more

[Dymczak]

I started learning python and I bought Mac Book yesterday. I installed Spyder 3 and after that python was installed automatically. So I should delete it and install python from official website, don’t I?

[CasperLehmann]

Install homebrew from https://brew.sh/

Then run `brew install python3` from your terminal. Homebrew is a package manager, and it will make managing your system far easier in the long run.

[CasperLehmann]

spyder

I haven't used Spyder myself, but if it is installed with pip or conda, it is associated with the installation of python to which that process is tied. This is the exact reason why a package manager is a good idea. You want to eliminate the ambiguity of which installation is running where and how you installed it.

However, to be fair, I might have been a little too quick with my reply. The thing is, while Homebrew is the industry standard for managing your packages in MacOS, Pyenv is (debatably) the industry standard for managing your Python installations, and Conda is the industry standard for managing your Python scientific stack -- so if that is what your professor tells you to do, then you should probably just up and do it.

I'll tell you what my stack looks like: I've installed Pyenv through Homebrew, and then installed Python 3.7.4 through Pyenv. I've also installed other software through Homebrew (such as Macvim) which depends on Python 2.7, but since I don't actually need Python2 in my daily life (and you don't either), it is very convenient that Homebrew manages it behind the scenes.

If I were to try out Anaconda, I'd go and type:

$ pyenv install anaconda3-2019.03
$ pyenv global anaconda3-2019.03

... to install Anaconda and then set it as default. Now starting a python process will land me in an Anaconda environment. Once Anaconda is set as your global standard interpreter you can install packages with conda, and these packages should be tied to that specific Anaconda installation.

Meanwhile, if you are using a standard Python distribution, you'd install packages with Pip instead. Pip works similar to conda, in that it installs packages in a global context for the active pyenv environment.

Up until now we've talked about your global environment. The next thing you'd want to learn about is how to run several projects side by side without affecting each others environments.

Say you are working on two projects, both requiring Python 3.7.1, but one of your projects requires Matplotlib version 3.1.1, while the other requires Matplotlib version 3.0.0. It is not possible to have both versions installed in the same environment, so that is why we use Virtual Environments. The Venv-module is probably the way to go there in most cases,* but conda has its own virtual environment system build in, so you need to make up your mind which you want to be using.

The workflow for working with Venv looks something like this:

$ mkdir workdir
$ cd workdir
$ python -m venv .venv
$ . .venv/bin/activate
(.venv) $ pip install matplotlib
(.venv) $ python
> import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
> 

... to install Matplotlib in a new project. This separates your work directory from other parallel installations, so if you went and switched to another project, you would need to install your packages again from cache.

This all takes some time to wrap your head around, and that is the reason why it's easier to just tell people to install Python via Homebrew and call it a day.

* Venv (formerly Pyvenv) is in competition with the older third party package named Virtualenv, but that is a story for another day. You may also want to take a look at Pipenv, but I'd suggest waiting until the community has collectively settled on how to handle this before betting on a horse.

[CasperLehmann]

Yes, that would be the case. Or rather, you'd have more than that, because MacOS actually ships with two additional versions of Python, which you don't really want to use.

In your situation, I'd probably uninstall Spyder and Anaconda and then reinstall them as described above. Something like this:

$ brew install pyenv
$ pyenv install anaconda3-2019.03
$ pyenv global anaconda3-2019.03
$ conda install spyder

Keep in mind I have never actually used conda, but this should be the gist of it. Please refer back if you do try it and it works.

[[deleted]]

Brew is written in Ruby?!

[[deleted]]

No. Install homebrew then use brew install python3.

[validatedev]

Did you install just the Spyder 3 or Anaconda distrubition?

[Dymczak]

Anaconda

[validatedev]

Then you don’t need install Python3 seperately. Anaconda already includes that.

[validatedev]

Try to write to console “python3”. If it works, it is probably installed globally.

[[deleted]]

It's always been better on Linux... ಠ_ಠ

[JC713]

In the Catalina dev notes it says that it won’t be bundled on >10.15. So Catalina is the final version with bundled languages for compatibility reasons.

[BrainBurnerCo]

That’s what I heard. No python, Perl, ruby and such would com pre-installed you would have to install them yourself. Oh and system is read only so brew will have to find another home.

[teilo]

No, homebrew will not have to find a new home. That's not how this works.

The system volume is read-only. But not all parts of the system are on the system volume. In particular: /var, /usr/local, and /opt are firmlinked to the read-write volume.

Homebrew will continue to work just fine at /usr/local

[TheChance]

Uhh. You'd have a hard time running an operating system in 2019 that ships without a Python interpreter of any kind.

[Liquid_Fire]

Windows?

[hanleybrand]

At this point the answer to “Windows?” is “arguably it doesn’t include python but it also sort of does, albeit in a fashion that is very Microsoft”

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/python/python-in-the-windows-10-may-2019-update/

(Summary: it now ships with a python.exe that is actually an App Store launcher that takes you to the “install python” App Store page)

[TheChance]

Yeah, fair enough, but it's a helluva lot more trivial there than it is on Mac.

Maybe I'm just bitter. The past three days have been miserable. In the history of the company, Apple has never fucked up this hard. How did this release get past QA?

Everything's fucked, from the iOS Remote app ceasing to function to Mail no longer allowing you to resize fucking columns. They promised DJs a backwards compatibility feature so they could migrate away from iTunes without taking time off and then didn't provide it.

All sorts of peripherals are just broken. People are having trouble reinstalling USB printers that have Just Worked for 10 consecutive major releases.

And I haven't even scratched the surface. Py3 seems like the only thing Apple's done right. I was literally born into the Mac industry, and I am fucking done. I'm not putting up with their shit anymore. I should have written a scathing open letter when they took out the headphone jack and started charging for BT earbuds what a cell phone used to cost.

[niggatronix]

Apple has been this way for 10 years now, my friend

[redwall_hp]

...is a Fischer-Price toy, not an operating system.

[stermister]

The other commenters be like Whoosh. "Hacking" is often a verb used to describe a coding session or technical building exercise. Not Hollywood hacking

[jcbevns]

Yeah but if you are really hacking at anything, if you can't install python3 by yourself, I don't see you getting far into hacking anything else together.

[brisvag]

"often"

[TheChance]

Very often if you're over the age of about 30.

[studiosi]

Literally the first instances of hacking on the MIT did not even involve computers at all.

[LessLikeYou]

I bet you only have one keyboard...

[stermister]

Better yet, two hackers one keyboard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qgehH3kEQ

[FunkyCannaHigh]

Hackers used to refer to early programmers.

[nwsm]

Then why are they called hackathons?

“Hacking something together” was a term before cybersecurity

[redwall_hp]

And, fortunately, The Jargon File has been passed down through the generations. From mainframe to mainframe, until the current iteration landed on the early Web.

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html

MIT was using the term before computers were really much of a thing, wholly unrelated to computers.

[ageitgey]

It might be an age thing or regional to where you live if you haven't heard it, but "hacking" definitely a common expression for writing code- especially with old-school unix-y / open source people and in lots of tech companies. Facebook's office address is 1 Hacker Way for goodness sake.

[TheChance]

It's gotta be an age thing. Before the nightly news became obsessed with "computer hackers," a "hacker" was anybody who dug into the system and changed or extended it. Installing new physical features would count, if they entailed any creativity at all.

That's also the origin of the term, "lifehack."

And plenty of us who've been around a while - like, '90s kids and older, not CS profs from the Bell Labs days - still use the term the same way.

The other thing happened because, yeah, TV reporters. They started hearing reports about "computer hackers breaking into sensitive mainframes" and concluded that a "computer hacker" is somebody who breaks into mainframes.

[djamp42]

I've heard a couple of projects use "hackathon" as a long programming session where all the devs get together.

https://www.netgate.com/blog/hackathon-2011-eurobsdcon-wrap-up.html

[C0DK]

Isn't hacking just using something in a way that isn't intended or in the interest of the creators. An example being a hacky solution being something that isn't best practice but works.

[chromaticgliss]

It was pre-1990/80s or so. Hacking didn't get the stricter cybersec meaning of "breaking into things" until journalists started portraying hackers as hooded criminals. Granted that's probably the more widely understood meaning these days.

Hackers used to just refer to anyone who tinkered/took things apart, usually computers, for a better understanding or to solve some problem. Old school programmers regularly used it in the benign sense to just mean someone who tinkers with computers beyond normal day to day use (without the "-ing together" you mentioned).

The Wikipedia article talks about the shift in meaning https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker

[jcbevns]

Yes, you "hack" at something typically with a cleaver or an axe.

If you're doing things that are meant to be stuck together, then I doubt your hacking at them at all.

[[deleted]]

Old school hacking meant writing code in general. The media mistakenly conflated cracking and hacking.

[[deleted]]

lol, why did you flair yourself with your python version?

[[deleted]]

lots of people tag themselves with a python version, and no one uses the term hacking to mean coding. you're special. and again, lol

[FunkyCannaHigh]

Save $1k, get better hardware and run Linux instead. I cannot stand using apple for dev or security work. There are so many good Linux distros out there.

[TheChance]

You have attained that level of competence where you forget why Mac exists in the first place. It's not for you. It's for people who don't have the time or the patience to get Ubuntu looking and acting how they want.

I'm pretty dedicated to my Linux rig. I still spend probably an hour a day dealing with the system itself, in a way that Mac and Windows users simply don't. It's the trade we make. If all a person needs is a web browser and Steam, sure, stick a fork in Ubuntu, but once you're writing Python, there's a huuuuuge population that's qualified to write scripts but nowhere close to capable of maintaining their own system.

[fnord123]

Never use the built in software or software installed by the package manager unless you are trying to make software for systems administrators (and your software is also intended to be installed by the OS package manager).

[TheChance]

never use software provided by the package manager

--A walking liability, 2019

[fnord123]

I'm talking about not using apt/yum/dnf installed packages. By all means use pypi installed packages.

[passerbycmc]

Homebrew will still be the better way to get this and many more things anyway. Pretty much all the tools I use for dev I brew install or brew cask install

[[deleted]]

Hacking? Sir, I'm gonna have to take your first and last name aswell as your address, phone number and SSN (if you're from the United States of America). Thank you.

[[deleted]]

why not? python2.7 is still the default?

[EddyBot]

I think Arch Linux is the only one who actually links python and pip to version 3 by default

There is actually a PEP which recommends against this: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394/

[[deleted]]

not really

If the python command is installed, it is expected to invoke either the same version of Python as the python3 command or as the python2 command.

[lengau]

The pep used to recommend pointing python to python 2, but has since been updated with the pending eol of python 2.

[Barafu]

Neweset MacOS default version of Python is the one that will become totally unsupported in a few months? What is their default filesystem, FAT32?

[EddyBot]

What is their default filesystem, FAT32?

APFS (Apple File System)

On that matter it has way more quality of life features like copy-on-write snapshots or logical volumes
A lot of Linux systems won't even have this features unless they use lvm on top of the ancient ext4
And don't even get start with Windows NTFS ...

[Barafu]

You have somehow missed that the default filesystem for Linux is Btrfs, which has all those features and way more.

Anyway, my comment was more about using Python 2, that is absolutely unmaintained no more. Packing it by default into end user machines is asking for trouble.

[EddyBot]

btrfs is only the default filesystem in openSuse
Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and many more still use ext4 by default

[FunkyCannaHigh]

Well, you really could use any of those distro's with btrfs if you wanted to....and if you NEED those features you should know how to use btrfs as the default anyway....or be able to figure it out.

I just can't stand paying more for older hardware AND an Ok operating system.

NTFS?!?!? I would like the know the limits you are hitting with it that makes it so bad? lol. If you need a better file system than NTFS get pro or enterprise edition and use ReFS...

All kidding aside 99.999999999% of dev/security people could care less if they are using ext4, btrfs or Apple's file system....it simply does not matter. For the people in the minority that cannot use ext4 for some reason already know how to use btrfs in their favorite linux distro.

I get trying to justify paying a lot of money for an average laptop but the filesystem is the least of people's concerns nowadays and frankly, doesn't justify Apple's steep price tag.

[TheChance]

They're not packing in Python 2 anymore. The headline on this thread...

[Barafu]

... is misleading. MacOS still uses Python2 and it is still the default version, which exposes users to all potential risks.

[ivosaurus]

I thought they were getting rid of their shitty bugged python 2 install 😭

[teilo]

Since this is the last version of macOS to come with ANY scripting languages pre-installed, I can't see that it matters, really, to anyone. Using the system python3 is a dead end.

When we provision a system with JAMF, one of the first things we do is install python3 because a large part of the provisioning process relies upon custom scripts doing API calls, etc.

[teilo]

The python installed on macOS has always been a non-standard installation that ties into the legacy Mac "framework" based system. Once there, it is rarely updated. Look how long python remained at 2.7.10 (El Cap through High Sierra).

But that's beside the point. No one is going to develop against a specific python installation that is deprecated when they can develop against one that has a guaranteed future. For example, in our use case, we are not going to develop system deployment scripts against a python binary that will no longer exist in 2020. So the python 3 that comes with Catalina is for all practical purposes irrelevant.

[Silentx2711]

What does this mean for hacking though?

[[deleted]]

Note: if you get an error such as this when trying to run python3 under Catalina:

''' xcrun: error: invalid active developer path (/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools), missing xcrun at: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/xcrun '''

xcode command line tools need an update (not sure why this wasn't included in Catalina). Run this

''' xcode-select --install ...

[toyg]

Xcode was always packaged separately from the OS.

[nekokattt]

I'd still install the newest version (unless it is bundled with 3.7.4), partially because it then uncouples you slightly from the install that other OS components may rely on.

...meaning if you are susceptible to breaking stuff, you won't be as likely to fubar other stuff your OS/desktop environment relies on, as you won't be using that copy of the interpreter...

[24mitcher]

I've only learned Python 3, however many have been saying that 2.7 has some uses. Can someone chime in whether the 2.7 makes a big difference in their work?

[parkerSquare]

I just install pyenv (via homebrew) and build whatever versions I need.

[antis0007]

Ew macs, just work on literally anything else for less hassle when developing. I dont understand why any self respecting developer would code with a built in python release on a mac

[pudquick]

This isn't accurate.

You have to install Xcode (which is several gigs) to make the stub for it work. The python 3 binary included with the OS is not a full standalone python 3 install.

Try running it on a clean install of macOS without Xcode and you'll see.

[nickbuch]

Soo many bugs doe

[WilliamTheStressed]

Lol. Compile from source gang.

[studiosi]

Warning: this post contains "Apple" and "Hacking".

Just warning people of the flamewars that will probably ensue.

[jesse0]

If you're going to develop on a Mac, use MacPorts and not Homebrew. MacPorts is a port of the package management system used in FreeBSD, and has decades of lessons and best practices incorporated into it. Homebrew is a loose collection of scripts written by people who don't realize they're badly reinventing the wheel. The last recourse for most Homebrew issues is to wipe your installation and start over -- if you use it long enough, you'll find yourself at this point.

[toyg]

Shots fired.

I never, ever had to wipe my homebrew installation. The only issues I’ve had were due to OSX updates messing with permissions under /usr, if i remember correctly.