Show HN: FunctorFlow – An attempt to re-imagine Python libraries • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: FunctorFlow – An attempt to re-imagine Python libraries

#21

Post by mruts » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 6:44 PM UTC

fromthestart wrote: post #20

mruts wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, data science is really the thing that people should be using Python for.

What? Python is arguably the go-to language in data (and other) science. With a massive ecosystem of mature, powerful libraries like numpy and scipy, you immediately and freely have access to a range of features, managed almost trivially with pip/virtualenv/conda. I don't think any other language has a larger number of performant ML libraries like tensorflow and pytorch, and more importantly, if you want source from…

"I mean, data science is really the thing that people should be using Python for."

Did you read my comment?

Re: Show HN: FunctorFlow – An attempt to re-imagine Python libraries

#22

Post by uponcoffee » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

I was hoping this would combine the best features of existing package managers, but instead this seems to have been made in a vacuum.

While making a good package manager/community around it is hard, there's plenty of hard earned knowledge that's been completely ignored here.

This seems to make dependency management harder (imports spilled all over the code base, versioning seems non-existent, documentation for this/plugins? Twitter is not documentation).

How does plugin authoring work? How does distribution and trust work?

What problem is this supposed to solve that isn't addressed by other package managers (or what does this do better than said package managers)

Re: Show HN: FunctorFlow – An attempt to re-imagine Python libraries

#23

Post by samravshanov » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 6:56 PM UTC

uponcoffee wrote: post #22

I was hoping this would combine the best features of existing package managers, but instead this seems to have been made in a vacuum. While making a good package manager/community around it is hard, there's plenty of hard earned knowledge that's been completely ignored here. This seems to make dependency management harder (imports spilled all over the code base, versioning seems non-existent, documentation for this/p…

Hi friend, This is a humble beginning. Now docs are in YAML-like format and soon they will be published in a readable and interactive format on our new website. For now, I just wanted to share it earlier and to involve other developers in the process.

Thanks for understanding. ;)

Re: Show HN: FunctorFlow – An attempt to re-imagine Python libraries

#24

Post by dharmab » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 7:14 PM UTC

Lack of versioning support makes this absolutely unusable for anything but sandboxing. And since the imports are scattered all over the code, it's hard for security scanning tools to check for vulnerabilities and to update libraries regularly. Pip isn't perfect but at least piprot helps me keep libs up to date.

This tool was clearly designed in a vacuum.

Re: Show HN: FunctorFlow – An attempt to re-imagine Python libraries

#25

Post by samravshanov » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 7:25 PM UTC

dharmab wrote: post #24

Lack of versioning support makes this absolutely unusable for anything but sandboxing. And since the imports are scattered all over the code, it's hard for security scanning tools to check for vulnerabilities and to update libraries regularly. Pip isn't perfect but at least piprot helps me keep libs up to date. This tool was clearly designed in a vacuum.

Friend, there is a versioning mechanism. I'll share details in our Discord group. Please, subscribe to our email list to participate in our alpha.

Re: Show HN: FunctorFlow – An attempt to re-imagine Python libraries

#26

Post by IceDane » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 7:29 PM UTC

This is just an awful idea all the way through. I'm baffled by how much effort had been put into this. It's almost as if the author went off grid and made this without ever asking anyone if it was a good idea without a second thought for whether it was needed at all. It's also obvious to anyone that you cannot just magically make version numbers disappear and expect everything to go well.

Re: Show HN: FunctorFlow – An attempt to re-imagine Python libraries

#27

Post by motohagiography » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

I find how offended some of the people commenting are really compelling. What is the rationale behind this? Like why do it, then why again?

I'm still open to the possibility this could be brilliant.

Re: Show HN: FunctorFlow – An attempt to re-imagine Python libraries

#28

Post by kristjansson » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 7:37 PM UTC

The source for the primary package is not published, afaik. The primary entrypoint function is implemented in cython, resisting casual analysis. The stated purpose is to pull (unversioned!) code from the internet and run it, but no mechanism to trust or verify that code is even mentioned.

The advisability of the idea aside, the presentation here feels exceedingly and unnecessarily risky

Re: Show HN: FunctorFlow – An attempt to re-imagine Python libraries

#29

Post by samravshanov » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 7:37 PM UTC

IceDane wrote: post #26

This is just an awful idea all the way through. I'm baffled by how much effort had been put into this. It's almost as if the author went off grid and made this without ever asking anyone if it was a good idea without a second thought for whether it was needed at all. It's also obvious to anyone that you cannot just magically make version numbers disappear and expect everything to go well.

Friend, there is a versioning mechanism. I'll share details in our Discord group. Please, subscribe to our email list to participate in our alpha.

Re: Show HN: FunctorFlow – An attempt to re-imagine Python libraries

#30

Post by marcinzm » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 7:44 PM UTC

So, aside from other comments, doesn't this break the already mediocre tab completion side of python? Scrolling through API docs to figure out what exactly that method or argument was called gets really tedious after the 5000th time.