Live data from Hacker News

macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including Python, Ruby, and Perl

developer.apple.com

131–140 of 450 posts

Re: macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including Python, Ruby, and Perl

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're joking, right? Brew is NOT the de-facto package manager, macoports is. Learn what "de-facto" means. Brew is a fucking trainwreck that shits all over "/" and has a tendency to break existing critical features while failing to stay up to date. I wouldn't touch it again with a 10 foot pole, and actively discourage people from using it.

On the other hand, actually trying to use MacPorts when one is accustomed to package managers like apt is an exercise in extreme patience.

Why?

Re: macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including Python, Ruby, and Perl

#132
post #76

Not surprising at all. It's become clear that what they've been doing with iOS all along is bootstrapping a new operating system. They started with Unix, not because Unix was optimal for what they wanted to do, but it's what they had and it worked well enough. Copland and Taligent and the rest failed because of Second-System Effect, which Apple was smart enough to avoid. (As RMS wrote in 1983, "Unix is not my ideal s…

I think you’re overthinking this. The vast majority of Ruby/Python programmers have been installing their own copies themselves, because Apple was pretty slow in updating them (Ruby is usually a few minor releases behind, Python is still 2.7 IIRC). People will just keep doing that, and nothing will change.

They may or may not be moving off Unix, but this isn’t evidence of that.

Re: macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including Python, Ruby, and Perl

#133

With brew as the de-facto package manager for macOS this is a great move. Having Python and Ruby bundled with macOS is confusing when trying to install "regular" versions of the software through brew or other methods. Because the default installation can't updated without updating the OS, the system versions are not useful for most developers.

You're joking, right? Brew is NOT the de-facto package manager, macoports is. Learn what "de-facto" means. Brew is a fucking trainwreck that shits all over "/" and has a tendency to break existing critical features while failing to stay up to date. I wouldn't touch it again with a 10 foot pole, and actively discourage people from using it.

Besides your tone and language being unwelcome here... you're just factually wrong. Comparing in Google Trends, it's very clear brew is the "de facto" package manager, and has been for years:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...

Re: macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including Python, Ruby, and Perl

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. It's better for them to install it themselves so they know exactly what they're using, and so they type python for python 3 and not python3.

I'm gonna disagree on this one. When you're just starting, the installation process can be nontrivial and the terminal window is scary. Having less friction there makes it easier to start and build some confidence. Once you have some idea of what you're doing, you can realize that you want different versions of the language.

If you have a tough time installing software that has maybe a dozen words or so of instructions in a clear easy-to-read format... you really have no business learning to code until you learn how to use your computer first.

Re: macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including Python, Ruby, and Perl

#136
post #125

I'm trying to understand how these two points reconcile. "Future versions of macOS won’t include scripting language runtimes by default" and "Use of Python 2.7 isn’t recommended as this version is included in macOS for compatibility with legacy software. Future versions of macOS won’t include Python 2.7. Instead, it’s recommended that you run python3 from within Terminal." If Catalina is the last version with any scr…

As I understood it, scripting languages will still be available to the user, they just won’t have ancient versions preinstalled. Of course that also means you can’t rely on them being installed at all as a developer.

Which means you should start bundling the stuff you need to run your app, and, they’d like you not to use the same ancient batteries as they have previously made available, because, well they are ancient.

Re: macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including Python, Ruby, and Perl

#137

This has been a topic brought up internally at Apple many times over the past decade. Glad to see it finally moving forward. Although I see the benefits to having a system-version of these packages.. if you're doing anything serious for production then the environment should be containerized.

> if you're doing anything serious for production then the environment should be containerized. What do you mean?

I’m not OP but:

When you build and package things for production you should create an environment. This ensures the packaging the right versioning of requirements for build.

Say you build using the system version but use packages based on another version. It may work for you but probably won’t work elsewhere.

Re: macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including Python, Ruby, and Perl

#138

This has been a topic brought up internally at Apple many times over the past decade. Glad to see it finally moving forward. Although I see the benefits to having a system-version of these packages.. if you're doing anything serious for production then the environment should be containerized.

Does OSX offer reasonable container technology? chroot?

I imagine you could get pretty far with sandboxing+chroot, but it wouldn’t be docker. You’d definitely be able to prevent stuff in the container from getting out, but I’m not so sure you could reproduce docker’s “VM-like” (I.e. the inside of the container is ~identical to a normal Linux machine, with no need to make stuff compatible) quality.

Re: macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including Python, Ruby, and Perl

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What newbie will start with Python 2.7 at this point in time? Most books and tutorials are updated for Python 3. The default Python 2.7 interpreter from macOS is useless for newbies, it does more harm than good by confusing them.

Apple could solve this problem by including python3 with macOS...

Presumably someone said that about python 2 back in the day and that turned out to be a pretty bad decision.
Post reply on HN