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

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

#351

Post by toyg »

Fnoord wrote: post #293
pdpi wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it’s not a hard engineering challenge. However, installation instructions right now are as simple as “run this one-liner on your terminal”. That’ll have to materially change.

> Sure, it’s not a hard engineering challenge. However, installation instructions right now are as simple as “run this one-liner on your terminal”. That’ll have to materially change. It could just as well still remain a one-liner. Every system Homebrew is installed on has Bash installed (not the latest, but still). Instead of > /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/i…

> Every system Homebrew is installed on has Bash installed

Ironically, they are also moving from bash to zsh for default shell. Again not an unsurmontable challenge (just make sure the bang is correct in your scripts, bash will likely still be around somewhere in macOS for the foreseeable future) but another little hurdle to mind.

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

#352

Post by IshKebab »

Bonooru wrote: post #109
benatkin wrote: post #74

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.

What's more scary? Copying and pasting two lines into the terminal, or working out why the hell pip doesn't work.

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

#353

Post by toyg »

jypepin wrote: post #188
ken wrote: 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…

One good thing about programming on Mac is the UNIX environment which basically works just like on Linux. Makes it great for finding questions/solutions that work (vs on Windows for example). Do you see that changing as macOS gets away from UNIX? That would probably be a bad hit on apple if Linux becomes then the de facto programming OS when Apple drops UNIX

> if Linux becomes then the de facto programming OS

It is already. Deployed any production service on macOS, of late? Windows and MacOS both, are now forced to run Linux compatibility layers (Docker, WSL...); the Mac one just happens to be thinner because of the choices made at NeXT back in the day.

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

#354

Post by toyg »

saagarjha wrote: post #148
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homebrew installs its own binaries in a way that they won't interfere with the macOS-supplied versions. It doesn't use a container or anything like that. Certainly not a full-on VM. Maybe I'm old-fashioned (feels weird to say that as a 25-year-old, but here we are), but I quite like not having everything be in a container all the time.

> Homebrew installs its own binaries in a way that they won't interfere with the macOS-supplied versions Correction: Homebrew usually installs its binaries in a way that doesn't interfere with the ones provided with the system. It will occasionally override or shadow them and things will break.

> It will occasionally override or shadow them

That's extremely rare, these days. When a conflict is possible, they just drop the new version in the cellar and tell you what to do if you really want to risk shooting yourself in the foot.

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

#355

Post by aloer »

frou_dh wrote: post #246
TimTheTinker wrote: post #192

I think this is great, but at the same time, auto-installing homebrew ought to be an option (perhaps enabled by default) when installing the “XCode command line tools”. Better yet, offer a “developer setup” app that sets up the command line tools, homebrew, iTerm2, updated bash/zsh, and more. Apple would do best to pave the cow paths developers have already worn into macOS, especially when it comes to command line ut…

I reject the persistent meme that iTerm2 is somehow essential. Apple do a great job with the builtin Terminal.app

iTerm is amazing when using many spaces because of the hotkey overlay.

Projects and project parts are separated via spaces but I never want to have to find the right terminal for a process, instead I use a single window with animations disabled (to show immediately) and excluded from app switcher via settings so that it will only ever show up when i press alt-space no matter which space I'm on.

Together with tabs and native panes it works just great and requires very little setup

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

#356

Post by Fnoord »

toyg wrote: post #351
Fnoord wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, it’s not a hard engineering challenge. However, installation instructions right now are as simple as “run this one-liner on your terminal”. That’ll have to materially change. It could just as well still remain a one-liner. Every system Homebrew is installed on has Bash installed (not the latest, but still). Instead of > /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/i…

> Every system Homebrew is installed on has Bash installed Ironically, they are also moving from bash to zsh for default shell. Again not an unsurmontable challenge (just make sure the bang is correct in your scripts, bash will likely still be around somewhere in macOS for the foreseeable future) but another little hurdle to mind.

Doesn't surprise me given they dislike GPLv3 and Zsh is MIT.

Personally I try to use #!/bin/sh as much as possible, and Fish as my default shell.

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

#357

Post by toyg »

alerighi wrote: post #324

Good thing, python2.7 is deprecated and no longer receives security updates, and a lot of Linux distributions (Arch and Fedora for example) plans to remove it from the main repositories at the end of this year, so having it installed doesn't make sense. Even the perl and ruby version installed is old, and nearly nobody uses perl or ruby at this day. Maybe perl is still used by some programs and scripts, for example T…

> python2.7 is deprecated and no longer receives security updates

Let's not go overboard - 2.7 will get security updates and patches until the end of December.

> nearly nobody uses perl or ruby at this day.

Well, except for homebrew of course, the Ruby-based package manager nearly "everybody" uses...

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

#358

Post by ch4s3 »

Fnoord wrote: post #257
adrianN wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying Apple should adopt brew as default package manager and install all system tools using brew? I could get behind that, but just dropping everything without replacement makes it harder for first-time programmers.

That, with analytics off by default. Also, Homebrew depends on Ruby, and Apple just ditched that

Homebrew installs it’s own ruby when necessary.

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

#359

Post by toyg »

dcosson wrote: post #154
Waterluvian wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python and pip just being there is a huge advantage for newbies. I really think that part of programming is constantly ignored because all the decision-makers are not newbies.

It's honestly terrible for newbies. If they try to use it, there's no pip included. So then they easy_install all their libraries which installs things into different places than most python devs will be used to. Or they easy_install pip first. But even still, everything is installing to system paths, so when they try to install things it fails with permission errors. They find a stack overflow post that says just "s…

Homebrew is not perfect though - it doesn't handle multi-versions (e.g. 3.7 and 3.8 running in parallel), which were working fine with Apple's Framework mechanism. Pyenv is superior in that respect (although it's fundamentally a hack). But I agree that brew does a better job for newbies than Apple's system python.

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

#360

Post by knolan »

ken wrote: 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 disagree. MacOS is hugely popular in academia. A significant amount of researchers use MacBooks as it allows them to have the best of both worlds by having a machine that runs MS Office for preparing proposals and dealing with Admin as well as a UNIX system that lets them ssh into whatever workstation or cluster they’re running jobs on. Sure Windows is catching up in this regard but MacOS has had the advantage of being a much nicer experience.

Getting your products into Universities is a great way to maintain market share. This is true for software like Matlab and even for banks where most students will keep banking with the same bank for decades.

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