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Python 3.11

docs.python.org

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Re: Python 3.11

#41

Post by sergiomattei »

iamcreasy wrote: post #32
lmm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Python has a low barrier to entry and is a popular first language, so most users don't realise how bad it is. 2. Python was originally popular with old-school sysadmins, Debian types, and a lot of its package management is based around that philosophy of carefully hand-tended servers shared by multiple users.

Care to elaborate on what is bad? How bad are they compared to other languages? (Assuming you are always accepting some tradeoffs when moving from one eco system to another)

It's painfully archaic compared to languages that have all this sorted out.

Pip is a recipe for disaster, indicated by the huge amount of churn in the Python packaging sphere. It's constantly the worst part of my day whenever I pick a Python project up. Conflicting dependencies, non-deterministic installs, etc.

I used to cope with this crap fest until I tried Elixir and experienced the beauty of modern package management and build tools. One tool, Mix, that handles task running and dependency management with a proper resolver.

I honestly think even Node has a better package management and tooling story.

Also: virtual environments are a hack and a pain. Python is moving forward in this aspect with the recent PEP for the pypackages folder, but we're still a long way from adoption.

All of this stuff is painful for beginners. Virtual environments might seem easy to us, but I've had ridiculous amounts of trouble explaining why they're necessary to beginner developers. Then you have to explain `poetry` or `pip freeze`.

Even I have trouble coming back to older projects of mine and I'm an experienced Pythonista: I usually waste an hour or two trying to sort the pip dependencies out with whatever conflicts the resolver comes up with this time.

Python package management is not okay, we're all just used to coping with it. Other languages put it to shame.

Re: Python 3.11

#42

Post by nomel »

i_like_apis wrote: post #17
warent wrote: post #6

just spent about 4 hrs getting Python 2 and pip setup on my Mac. Any time I have the misfortune of needing to use python I get cold sweats at the thought of the environment stuff. Why is this still such a massive problem?

4 hours? Yeesh. Here's how to do it in 5-10 minutes. Use pyenv to install any python version and pyenv-virtualenv to manage virutal environments. https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv-virtualenv

For me, pyenv on Mac is about 15 minute compile time with a bunch of environment variables required to make sure tkinter works properly.

Re: Python 3.11

#43

Post by forgingahead »

saltyfamiliar wrote: post #28
forgingahead wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python dependency management is rubbish, and many python projects have incomplete or missing requirements.txt files. I dislike Python as well (why on earth is whitespace relevant??) but unfortunately if you want to tinker with any of the newest deep-learning projects, you'll need python. I use Anaconda for package management on Ubuntu, which helps a lot, but it's still not my preferred programming language.

> why on earth is whitespace relevant?? To eliminate the need for braces and semicolons, of course. It's part of what makes python so easy to read and write. Is it really such a problem? I honestly can't imagine disliking python. It's my goto for anything where performance doesn't matter due to its unmatched ergonomics and vast libs. Golang comes close but for some reason having to implement really common and basic t…

I prefer Ruby for quick scripting - in my opinion it beats Python in readability (sugarcoating handlers/hiding guts like not needing self littered everywhere), and seems to have more logical consistency in calls (eg: array.append(element) but len(array) in Python vs. array.append(element) and array.length in Ruby, amongst many other things).

It's definitely a preference, and Python has a lot of library support that the Ruby community doesn't (yet, hopefully), but grandparent's comment about headaches setting up Python with a simple project are pretty common.

Rarely do I encounter a Python project that "just works" - If your setup isn't exactly the same as the repo owner, and often even they don't even know why their setup is the way it is, then there's often a lot of fiddling and package adjustments needed. Not a deal breaker normally, but enough to make it more painful to quickly drop in and start experimenting with.

Re: Python 3.11

#44

Post by mbreese »

wutbrodo wrote: post #27
blondin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i sympathize. the problem is apple. they are (understandably) refusing to ship an up-to-date global python interpreter with macOS. not only that, they aren't removing the default 2.7 that they ship. macOS Big Sur ships Python 2.7. ha. ha. ha. none of the proposed "virtual environments" solutions are going to rescue you when you operate globally at the OS-level and not in a sandbox. been there.

> they are (understandably) refusing to ship an up-to-date global python interpreter with macOS What is the understandable reasoning?

It's pretty common to have kept `/usr/bin/python` as Python2. This is the most conservative option and won't break anything that's already running. Anyone who is using Python currently will have already installed Python 3 (or knows how to do this), and is probably using `#!/usr/bin/env python3`. As an OS vendor with many (many...) systems in the wild, you don't want to switch Python versions on people unexpectedly. Especially when it's still pretty painless to keep python2 around even if there is an installed python3.

For anyone that's still using python2 (as a nearby comment mentioned), there is now at least a warning to avoid using the default Python 2.7 (/usr/bin/python). For an OS vendor, this transition takes a long time... but at least it's in process.

Re: Python 3.11

#45

Post by radus »

Some nice changes:

> “Zero-cost” exceptions are implemented. The cost of try statements is almost eliminated when no exception is raised. (Contributed by Mark Shannon in bpo-40222.)

> Method calls with keywords are now faster due to bytecode changes which avoid creating bound method instances.

Re: Python 3.11

#46

Post by alwillis »

jnwatson wrote: post #26
warent wrote: post #6

just spent about 4 hrs getting Python 2 and pip setup on my Mac. Any time I have the misfortune of needing to use python I get cold sweats at the thought of the environment stuff. Why is this still such a massive problem?

Please enough of this. Trying spending 2 minutes googling it. Hint: pyenv

Took the words out of my mouth. Let’s not over complicate things.

Re: Python 3.11

#49

Post by cdrini »

warent wrote: post #6

just spent about 4 hrs getting Python 2 and pip setup on my Mac. Any time I have the misfortune of needing to use python I get cold sweats at the thought of the environment stuff. Why is this still such a massive problem?

Folks have given a number of good options here, but I thought I'd mention some other ones in case they're helpful for your use case.

1) docker! If you only plan on tinkering with something and don't want to install a bunch of random things on your machine, this command will start a python 2 image with access to the current directory: `docker run --rm -it -v "$PWD:/app" python:2.7 bash` (IIRC, on my phone atm!) (Windows users will need to write `"/$PWD://app"` if using mingw/etc). Once inside, you can pip install, etc, and it'll all go away once you exit the terminal! If you want it to stick around, don't use --rm and add a --name to give it a name you can remember for later. It does require learning some docker, but it's a good investment :) I use the same technique to try out/play with other languages, versions, packages, etc. without making complicated mods to my actual computer. And there might even be docker images that come with certain packages/etc pre-installed for certain use cases!

2) Pycharm! A good python IDE, with virtualenv support baked in if you don't feel like playing around with a bunch of commands at all. Although disclaimer, I can't fully remember how hard it was to get things setup (or how easy it is to work with multiple python versions), so YMMV.

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