Python programming is drowning in red tape • Hacker News Board

Re: Python programming is drowning in red tape

#21

Post by DeepYogurt » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 5:39 AM UTC

streblo wrote: post #12

> It was bikeshedding at its worst It's ironic that discussions about formatting are taking up so much mindshare in the python community. For years all you'd hear was that whitespace significance was a sign of the lowliness of python. Meanwhile, tons of people were ignoring the bikeshedding and getting things done. Now it's one of the most widely used languages in existence. The kinds of people that are focused on is…

I completely agree. Who cares if black is ugly? It's a standard which is easy to automate. Want a better standard? Make it. Until then black works.

Re: Python programming is drowning in red tape

#22

Post by segfaultbuserr » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 5:39 AM UTC

halfdan wrote: post #16

The author starts by criticising a bike-shedding mentality and then goes on to make bike-shedding arguments. They complain about the non-pep8 compliance, show what pep8 would look like and then argue that there's a better way.. As another commenter pointed out: This is all self-inflicted. Personally, I don't care how things are formatted, I just want it to be consistent.

> They complain about the non-pep8 compliance, show what pep8 would look like and then argue that there's a better way..

It did not suggest a "better" way, just the PEP-8 way.

It first complains about the non-PEP-8-compliance formatting, then shows a simpler PEP-8 example, and finally shows what will the initial code look like according to PEP-8.

Re: Python programming is drowning in red tape

#23

Post by Humphrey » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 5:41 AM UTC

j88439h84 wrote: post #20

All the "wait no" alternative tool suggestions are silly. There's a best tool. For packaging a Python project, that tool is Poetry. Pipenv, virtualenv, setup.py, venv, setup.cfg, are all outmoded.

Yes, Poetry is best-in-class package manager. I liked the idea of Pipenv, but in practice it just didn't work well. FYI, Poetry is just a fancy tool for managing your virtualenvs

Re: Python programming is drowning in red tape

#24

Post by shmolyneaux » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 5:41 AM UTC

Python runs the gamut. You can make small scripts that automate simple tasks and you can make huge websites that service millions of people a day. As projects get bigger, they can adopt tools to help them manage the complexity of the project.

These tools make complex projects simpler without complicating simple things. Personally, I wouldn't want to use Python on a large project without these tools.

Re: Python programming is drowning in red tape

#25

Post by oefrha » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 5:42 AM UTC

I don’t love black’s formatting, but this article is just wrong.

1. Black’s formatting of function arguments does not break PEP8, because the closing parenthesis is one level of indentation back, breaking the continuation. (I don’t even need to check linked threads. Dude is wrong and must have been told so. He doesn’t want to listen, fine. Fork as he wishes, but it’s not like I’m gonna use his fork over Łukasz Langa’s just because he’s tired arguing.)

2. “Piles and piles of red tape”: half are generic project or generic GitHub project stuff, optional of course (oh and black is there so that you don’t need editorconfig).

The Python specific stuff?

- mypy? If you drank the koolaid and now dogmatically type check all your code whether warranted or not. Me? Still enjoying dynamic typing. (Don’t get me wrong, I use mypy judiciously.)

- nose, pytest, unittest, etc.? Sorry you have a choice!

- Finally, I haven’t even heard of bumpversion and setuptools_scm and I’ve been scraping by pushing out releases after releases. I guess you’ll always find a way to pile on the red tapes if you’re enamored with stupid tooling to begin with.

3. Don’t see any “My experience with forking black”, only saw a few talking points, including useless ones like “Remove the ‘for humans’ garbage”. Guess it’s not written yet.

Btw, if a “massive” 3000 line module (lol) chokes up your editor, maybe it’s time to get a better one.

Re: Python programming is drowning in red tape

#26

Post by liquidify » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 5:45 AM UTC

I have felt like it is way to complicated to do certain things in python... primarily relating to building and packaging large scale code. But, for what I use it for (mostly scripting) it is wonderful. I use it locally, right from the IDE mostly. I almost never call things I make with it from the command line because they are usually single use or low use scripts. Things that I like enough to build into more usually get re-written in c++.

Re: Python programming is drowning in red tape

#27

Post by didibus » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 5:46 AM UTC

AlexandrB wrote: post #4

As a long time Python fan, I find the current state of the language frustrating. Tools like black and poetry are nice, but are not part of the standard library. Yet they seem to be required by every popular project out there. (Also, black’s formatting is quite ugly, as noted in this blog post) Meanwhile, the language itself is increasingly baroque and complicated. Type-annotated, asyncio-enabled Python hardly resembl…

I think this can be the curse of popularity. The demand from more and more users of different feature, especially backed by industries who rely on the language, means that slowly over time, all popular languages accumulate scope and feature creep to some extent.

But at the same time, for serious industry work, those features do come in handy when you do need them.

I think this is why to some extent you never hear that much good of the old tried and tested languages. They always feel bloated, disorganized, confusing, with too much cruft, and yet it's all that which make them what they are.

Re: Python programming is drowning in red tape

#28

Post by lmm » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 5:47 AM UTC

j88439h84 wrote: post #20

All the "wait no" alternative tool suggestions are silly. There's a best tool. For packaging a Python project, that tool is Poetry. Pipenv, virtualenv, setup.py, venv, setup.cfg, are all outmoded.

Every two years I've looked at Python again and been told that the horrible mess I saw last time is obsolete, there's a good tool now that fixes all the problems. Every time it's just been an even bigger mess with one more tool on top.

Re: Python programming is drowning in red tape

#29

Post by jordic » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 5:48 AM UTC

oefrha wrote: post #25

I don’t love black’s formatting, but this article is just wrong. 1. Black’s formatting of function arguments does not break PEP8, because the closing parenthesis is one level of indentation back, breaking the continuation. (I don’t even need to check linked threads. Dude is wrong and must have been told so. He doesn’t want to listen, fine. Fork as he wishes, but it’s not like I’m gonna use his fork over Łukasz Langa’…

100% agree with you. So happy with black and pytest.

- The formatting he is proposing for multiple args on a function with double tabs it's wired... O_O

- Same argument on mypy, if I want to type all variables, I perhaps will be happy doing it in go or rust.. python is dynamic :)

- pytest

- balck works so fine with vscode (pycharm will work if he disables linting code on every keystroke... )haha

Re: Python programming is drowning in red tape

#30

Post by jaimex2 » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 5:49 AM UTC

AlexandrB wrote: post #4

As a long time Python fan, I find the current state of the language frustrating. Tools like black and poetry are nice, but are not part of the standard library. Yet they seem to be required by every popular project out there. (Also, black’s formatting is quite ugly, as noted in this blog post) Meanwhile, the language itself is increasingly baroque and complicated. Type-annotated, asyncio-enabled Python hardly resembl…

Theres always Ruby