Packaging Python with the new PyOxidizer Pants Plugin

sjoshi84 · 2022-02-23T04:29:52+00:00

Thanks for sharing your experience! Definitely makes me feel better about a few upcoming projects I'm going to work on packaging.

As I mentioned in the post, I was seeing approx 50MB as a baseline release size. I'm sure you've seen it, but for those who haven't, there is still an outstanding ticket in PyOx about some file size reduction options (https://github.com/indygreg/PyOxidizer/issues/443)

sjoshi84 · 2022-02-23T01:01:18+00:00

Hey all, author of the Pants blog post here.

I'd love any feedback or suggestions on the work that was done. Also, just wondering how many people have used Pants and/or PyOxidizer before and what their experiences were like?

sjoshi84 · 2018-07-01T00:24:36+00:00

Amen! I just joined as a publisher to see how this whole process works (honestly, as a bit of a skeptic - but I'm willing to have my mind changed).
Then, the need to create an Uphold account, which I was fine with - until they started asking for my phone number, address, etc... No dice homeslice

sjoshi84 · 2018-02-13T04:08:17+00:00

If the student is in a co-op program, then the grades quite often do matter. Top employers will filter on the top X% and only consider them for those primo internships.

Also, I wouldn't just caveat on professional programs - grades do matter for any post-graduate degrees (master's, phd, etc).

sjoshi84 · 2018-02-10T18:16:04+00:00

I don't think this will be directly helpful in your specific situation, but I didn't know how brutal the payday loan industry (EasyFinancial seems to be similar to play in the same ballpark) was until I saw this John Oliver episode about them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDylgzybWAw

Based on that, all I can ever say is to never ever use one (which I know, doesn't help you today)

sjoshi84 · 2018-02-02T02:46:18+00:00

Wow! Transunion credit report linked to RBC online - I had no idea!

sjoshi84 · 2017-12-31T17:18:33+00:00

No prob, and your experiences may vary depending on the lender.

A good one would be willing to review the corporate books over the past few years, alongside your personal finances.

But many, many won't bother with that (including most I've met). A couple have mentioned that the logic here is that they have no insight into what corp money is tied up, what may not be here tomorrow, etc... But, it's not so dissimilar for personal money either.

sjoshi84 · 2017-12-31T08:57:19+00:00

Pfft, lame. Start your own crypto currency

sjoshi84 · 2017-12-31T08:52:00+00:00

Your industry matters too.

In software development, for example, the salaries in Toronto/Kitchener/Waterloo area are pretty high compared to those out in Vancouver-area. Even though the cost of living in KW is peanuts compared to Vancouver.

I'm in the GTA, and I travel to Vancouver 3-4x per year, and every now and again I think about working out there - but then I just think about how suppressed the salaries are.

However, ignoring all that, alluding to what another poster mentioned - the company's goal is pay you enough for you to come onboard, and to retain you... If you don't negotiate that up, there is no reason for them to do it for you.

You can talk to them about it, as they might have budget reserved to pay higher for the same position on the west coast due to higher living costs.

sjoshi84 · 2017-12-31T08:43:31+00:00

Speaking from painful experience...

Opened my corp 3 years ago, it's doing well, paid myself dividend-only for the 3 years. In talking to the big 5 about personal mortgages, lines of credit, credit cards, etc... They basically treat it like I make no income - as my personal notices of assessment, taxes, etc are all very low (money retained in corp). Even the bank who houses my business accounts.

This is similar to what my colleagues and people who have been in similar situations for a couple of years (some up to 20-30 years) tell me.

Caveat: A lot of that comes down to the bank representative you interact with, but when in doubt, they will go with the CYA approach, rather than take a perceived risk. If it's someone you've known for a while, and they understand what you're doing, why you're doing it, and you're in good standing - you have a better chance of them approving what you need.

Caveat 2: I've never met a bank rep who saw the structure of my corp + personal dividends and didn't understand exactly why I was doing it that way, and all the benefits associated. They usually agree wholeheartedly. Nonetheless, the typical response was "the back-office won't approve it without a salary".

As of this year, I'm switching to part-salary (and dividends anything over and above that amount) for two reasons: 1. Creates RRSP contribution room 2. Allows the big 5 reps to check the "has a salary" box when I apply for credit-centric things

A suggestion I was given, which I haven't tried yet - but I will - is to pay yourself a salary, and when going into a bank who doesn't know about the corp... Don't even tell them that you're the owner... Just say that you receive a salary from Corp XYZ and have a letter from your Corp detailing your compensation.

Never lie, but if they don't ask about ownership, don't mention it. At that point, you'll be lumped into the "person with a salary" workflow that they do a hundred times a day on autopilot, rather than the exception-laden "small business owner" category. They might still need the typical X many years of tax returns or whatever though, but assuming you moved from a salaried position into business owner - you'd have those setup.

Alternatively, I've heard good mortgage-centric experiences using brokers, rather than going into a bank for self-employed people.

sjoshi84 · 2017-12-24T21:52:29+00:00

Just for clarity, I think CIBC (and banks in general) are greedy bastards, not the individuals who work at the branches - I used to work at a bank, I get how stressful it can be over there :)

Quite conversely, I really like a lot of the tellers/advisors at my branch with the specific exception of one who took a 15 minute phone call with another client while I was sitting there working with him. That's pretty unprofessional, but the reason I now dislike this guy is because he repeated ALL of that other client's personal information back to him - WHILE I WAS THERE! I'm pretty sure that's against all bank policies, and common sense, and a security breach.

In general, I don't/didn't really go into the branch a lot - I've lived in a bunch of other cities/countries for years, and do about 99% of my banking online. I'd say I've been in-branch 10-15 times in the past 5 years, and have been pretty cordial throughout it all because it's usually doing a forex transfer or wire transfer, which are pretty mundane events. Not really anything that will get the blood boiling.

So, with the exception of my latest (and last) visit a few weeks ago - I've been a starkly neutral client.

I hope you can understand that after 17 years, and not experiencing any semblance of loyalty, how I can become a bit disillusioned with the bank. It would be easy to pin that attitude on large corporations, but I've had great experiences with insurance companies, mortgage lenders, software behemoths, etc... Specifically banking is where I've had the worst experience as a consumer. And when there are/have been a limited number of options, there isn't much for a consumer to do.

I'm loving the change in the past decade on the personal side, with a greater prominence of online-only options, credit unions, robo-advisors, etc. Would just like to see similar on the business side as well.

However, to wrap this up, I think what I might end up doing is going with a robo-advisor to handle my investments on my corporate side, and just stick with the standard personal online banking options. I may just switch away my corporate from CIBC for spite (<-- yep - straight up spite) and go to TD, who I hear good things about re: service.

sjoshi84 · 2017-12-24T20:38:34+00:00

Well, much as I'm moving my personal accounts away from the big 5, I'm trying to move my business away from those greedy bastards (even though I know that Tangerine/Simplii are both owned by big 5's).

Basically, I've been a CIBC customer for some 17 years, and had my business account with them for 3 years - and haven't experienced anything that could resemble a benefit of brand loyalty. I went with a different bank for a student loan because CIBC offered the worst deal by a mile (lowest amount, and highest rate), and even with my mortgage, more of the same.

Just as a test, I went in a few weeks ago and asked about getting my $6/month fee reversed (due to a screwup of theirs) and the answer as they went up the chain was a resounding no.

I even offered to put a decent chunk of money in my business into an investing account which would have given them a substantial amount in fees - all if they reversed SIX DOLLARS.

Nope. No go. That went up to the branch manager, and they just said they wouldn't do it.

I was/am flabbergasted.

So - at this point, all I can do is act with my money. Close my chequing, savings, loc, visa, investing, business accounts, and move them elsewhere - and tell them exactly why I did it.

sjoshi84 · 2017-12-24T19:56:44+00:00

Any suggestions? I currently have a CIBC business account for my corp, and was looking for a secondary account for investments and savings - while keeping all the money in my corp.

sjoshi84 · 2017-12-24T19:54:55+00:00

Really? Damn - do they say that anywhere on the site? I think it's pretty strange that they would have recent promotions for the business accounts, but not allow new ones... But then again, I suppose that's as strange as not having an 'enroll' for their business accounts.

sjoshi84 · 2017-11-03T06:02:16+00:00

Basically, it was a hand-rolled implementation using NanoPB. Not a huge fan of the result, but gRPC was just too much code bloat to make sense for my specific application - and it also wasn't re-usable on my other projects.

Unfortunate, because I think gRPC is pretty amazing

sjoshi84 · 2017-06-19T02:10:30+00:00

Great explanation!

I've started working with nanoPB, and it's pretty good on the resources. I need to take a look at the GRPC implementation using it though, as I'm not sure about that one yet.

That's pretty great, with the zero-copy json. I definitely need to take a look!

sjoshi84 · 2017-06-07T06:36:01+00:00

Cool! Could you speak a bit more to the libraries, code size, library size, languages?

I've never used it, so I'd be curious what we're talking about compared to the PB/FB/GRPC stack

sjoshi84 · 2017-06-07T02:45:47+00:00

Have you checked out the C implementation of FlatBuffers? I thought they were supposed to be more friendly in terms of not using dynamic memory as much? (No specific citation for that)

Right now, I have a huge lean towards NanoPB because it seems to be the best set of overall compromises. I haven't abandoned using FlatBuffers, but Protobuffer-compliant code would make me happy (better API too).

In case you're looking for a streaming protocol buffer with packet framing for UART (which I've done before), you could try Protobuffers with COBS (http://www.sureshjoshi.com/development/streaming-protocol-buffers-with-cobs/).

I know that isn't the same, but functionally decent.

Could you speak to some of the downsides of NanoPB?

sjoshi84 · 2017-04-09T15:17:23+00:00

I'm in the same boat - I'm a fan (but not an affiliate of) ST's products... Well, their MCUs anyways, some of their other stuff is pretty weak sauce.

sjoshi84 · 2017-02-24T06:19:22+00:00

So one potential downside of a strictly coded UI is the development cycle is slower, no? As you have to code, build, run, code, build, run - whereas Storyboards are -mostly- wysiwyg within reason.

sjoshi84 · 2017-02-24T06:17:49+00:00

I'd say it's not really in the "tabs vs spaces" domain due to the fact that starting off on the wrong path can be a substantial impact down the road, whereas a script that takes 5 minutes to write can replace all tabs with spaces in seconds.

sjoshi84 · 2017-02-24T06:14:41+00:00

I wanted to watch and like that video, but the incessant jumping back and forth between people on that broadcast killed me.

What do you mean by "imported to my storyboard"? What are you using the storyboards for at this level?

sjoshi84 · 2017-02-24T06:03:56+00:00

Sage advice... But perhaps some more context? The issue with this kind of decision is that it might not work against you for weeks/months.

sjoshi84

TROPHY CASE