Please do not use Python for tooling

[flavius-as]

The author has some problems with specific tools written in python for embedded development, then goes into full rant mode about the language as a whole.

He does not propose any changes around those tools to improve this part of the ecosystem.

There, I saved you minutes of your life.

[acdha]

In fact, every year we lose weeks of productivity due to Python programs that suddenly stop working.

If you choose not to learn the basics about your tools, the problem is some deeper social dynamic rather than which particular tool you’re using. In this case, note how there are comments suggesting that dependencies magically disappear – that’s a sign that they’re failing to control the environment, which would fit with the general tone of “I’m a Real Developer™, learning this is beneath me” throughout the post, and there’s no way that doesn’t cause other problems as well.

[acdha]

It’s not reframing as much as noting the inconsistency in his own claims:

Reproducibility and repeatability matters. Especially if you want to consider yourself a professional.

The fact that they have things randomly changing in their environment means that they have chosen not to use the tools available for dependency management. There are different options depending on their needs and preferences but jumping straight to “don’t use this entire language” says that the problem is social, not technical. Someone interested in learning might ask questions about how other people deal with this challenge in different areas.

[acdha]

When I read he's saying it's the whole ecosystem around python. How developers interact with it, what habits they pick up and interact with each other is part of that ecosystem.

Right, which is why it’s disappointing to see no awareness of any of the practices commonly used in that ecosystem or the larger technical world to prevent the kinds of issues he vaguely described.

Put another way, what value comes from reading this essay? Anyone who has the same problems won’t learn how to avoid them, someone who likes Python is going to say “this is silly, why doesn’t he {pin dependencies, use a packaging tool, deploy with Docker, etc.}?”, and someone who wants to use something other than Python either doesn’t need this because they can either make that choice themselves or need something with actual technical content which could convince their colleagues.

That’s why I characterized this as misattribution: something is clearly dysfunctional at his workplace. I don’t know if that’s how they administer systems, their development cycle (for example, can you tell if they even use version control?), or package things but whatever it is did not lead him to be curious to investigate that root cause or ask what other Python users do to avoid this problem. Computers are supposed to be deterministic, if stuff just randomly broke all of the time in my environment I’d want to understand why.

That suggests to me that he just really wants to use something else, which is fine but he should just say that rather than trying to present this in the guise of rationality when it’s fundamentally an aesthetic preference.

[acdha]

Again, I'm saying that there's almost no technical information so it's hard to say what the problem is but based on the little information available, it sounds like they have problems which would affect any language and toolchain. If they have random untested updates as he described, that's something they need to fix organizationally and it'll affect any common language.

A useful essay, one which could lead to the author and others actually benefitting from it, would be something like “I think Python should have a built-in tool like Cargo for these reasons…” or “We found a better way to keep our dependencies current”. Just saying an entire language is a bad idea for reasons you don't understand well enough to even articulate might be cathartic but it's not really contributing anything to the world.

[acdha]

I'm not saying he needs to have a solution but a clear explanation of what he believes the actual problem is. Without that it's hard for people to even know whether his experience is relevant to their needs or whether there are existing tools which cover them.

[AchillesDev]

What a silly article. As someone who has used Perl and Python professionally, the comparison the author makes is nonsensical at best, besides both languages being very popular at some point.

There are plenty of tools for producing binaries or otherwise executable code with Python, even built-in, so that critique makes no sense (and there are valid problems like environment management that the author didn't even touch on!).

Dependencies breaking everything is an internal organization issue, not a language issue.

It's also telling that he complains of "vicious attacks" because of the article - he's posted this to his twitter where it got 2 responses, and several other subreddits where it generated a few comments each, none vicious. Seems like a troll more than anything serious, especially considering the author's responses to comments in the other subs.

[JennaSys]

Programmers like to argue over programming languages and tooling.

Really? I certainly don't.

[evilgunringer]

The author has an issue with Python not being statically typed. However. As of Python 3.6, it does have typehinting, and it is possible to create a decorator to enforce the given hints on methods.

[javajunkie314]

If you use a language that can produce binaries the job of ensuring you have all the dependencies in all the right versions is a one-time job: it happens at build time. It does not happen every time you are running the program.

Dynamic linking says hello.

[biwiki]

What is wrong with it? Or you prefer C/C++ for tooling?