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Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

paulromer.net

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Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#41

Post by lxgr »

sonofhans wrote: post #35

This is really elegant. What a nice solution; single-step and reversible. It’s also excellent documentation, written by someone who clearly knows their audience. It keeps all operations in GUI-land, which most users consider more safe. It avoids almost all technical explanations. Folks responding with “Terminal is easier” are missing context. You’re not the audience. The fact that you can come up with seven solutions…

> It keeps all operations in GUI-land, which most users consider more safe.

Which is unfortunately exactly what enables so many tech support scams, so I'm not sure it's a pattern worth reinforcing.

In addition to that, while it might still be helpful for completely non-technical users, I really don't think "avoiding the terminal and edits to files" is a desirable goal for anyone studying either Python or data analytics.

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#42

Post by mplanchard »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #20
nextos wrote: post #18

I collaborate with people that use macOS while I use Linux. For reproducible environments, Nix has served us well. Despite the myth, it is not hard to use unless you need to package something complicated or messy. Then it may become hard. The advantage of Nix is total version reproducibility and declarativeness. It's quite reassuring to know things are exactly the same on all computers.

I am fully on board with having reproducible declarative setups, line Nix or Guix offer. I want to note though, that the versions and original code may be the same, but it can still happen that something behaves differently on another OS. The code of some version of a package can intentionally do things differently on another OS. So you are not 100% safe from MacOS disturbing things. I wish though, that at my job peo…

What we did at our job was I set up a nix config for myself, because I wanted it. When new people onboarded, they had two options: install this list of software or install nix and it’ll all get installed automatically. Enough people chose to use the nix config over time that it became the de facto standard.

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#43

Post by latchkey »

sonofhans wrote: post #35

This is really elegant. What a nice solution; single-step and reversible. It’s also excellent documentation, written by someone who clearly knows their audience. It keeps all operations in GUI-land, which most users consider more safe. It avoids almost all technical explanations. Folks responding with “Terminal is easier” are missing context. You’re not the audience. The fact that you can come up with seven solutions…

"If you teach a course that requires Python"

"Many of these students have not used the command line."

I'd suggest that we are failing to teach students learning to code, the basics of how to use computers. Pre-requisite should be a class on how to use the command line.

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#44

Post by giantrobot »

rfl890 wrote: post #27

Avoiding sh overcomplicates this. Just give them a one liner: mv ~/.zshrc ~/._zshrc and vice versa. Pasting a cmd is not rocket science.

Man you say that but many people simply do not understand that a command even is. They don't know to hit return after pasting or how much of the command to copy. Or they'll paste it in a text editor.

There's just a lot of people that did not grow up using computers the same way as many here. Whether it's they grew up on mobile devices or have only ever used a GUI.

I don't think it's reasonable to expect a developer to not understand command lines but plenty do not. There's whole populations of very junior programmers that have zero experience on the command line. Hell I know people with decades of Unix experience that don't know basic CLI stuff or reach for the GUI to install packages or manage things.

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#45

Post by hamandcheese »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #20
nextos wrote: post #18

I collaborate with people that use macOS while I use Linux. For reproducible environments, Nix has served us well. Despite the myth, it is not hard to use unless you need to package something complicated or messy. Then it may become hard. The advantage of Nix is total version reproducibility and declarativeness. It's quite reassuring to know things are exactly the same on all computers.

I am fully on board with having reproducible declarative setups, line Nix or Guix offer. I want to note though, that the versions and original code may be the same, but it can still happen that something behaves differently on another OS. The code of some version of a package can intentionally do things differently on another OS. So you are not 100% safe from MacOS disturbing things. I wish though, that at my job peo…

Although Nix seems to be becoming more mainstream, I still have yet to encounter a (forgive me for lack of a better word) normie that uses it.

I feel somewhat blessed that I get to work on tools at a company that can support a dedicated tools team. We are free to use the best tool for the job without needing to worry about popularity contests, and nix has truly been a game changer for us.

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#46

Post by mplanchard »

Zigurd wrote: post #29

As expected, I see comments here like "Avoiding sh overcomplicates this." It's true. I found the shell-avoiding instructions no better, and possibly worse, than shell commands. But: what's sauce for the end user goose is sauce for the developer gander. Developers are users. Give developers good visual tools. Sadly I don't think there is a visual front end to git,, for example, that is any good among the handful I hav…

Wish there was something like magit outside of emacs that I could recommend to people.

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#47

Post by hamandcheese »

mplanchard wrote: post #42
zelphirkalt wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am fully on board with having reproducible declarative setups, line Nix or Guix offer. I want to note though, that the versions and original code may be the same, but it can still happen that something behaves differently on another OS. The code of some version of a package can intentionally do things differently on another OS. So you are not 100% safe from MacOS disturbing things. I wish though, that at my job peo…

What we did at our job was I set up a nix config for myself, because I wanted it. When new people onboarded, they had two options: install this list of software or install nix and it’ll all get installed automatically. Enough people chose to use the nix config over time that it became the de facto standard.

I like this strategy. Nix can be tricky to explain, so sometimes showing is much easier than telling.

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#48

Post by chunkyks »

adolph wrote: post #4

Anaconda’s hidden license for institutions is a dark pattern time bomb for scientific computing.

We've been hit by this.

When I talked to them four years ago, they agreed we were good to use it for free, no problem.

The dollar figure they're asking for would make it the single most expensive software product we would be licensing in our enterprise, by a lot. The deadline is absurdly soon for such a big deal. And they opened discussion in an incredibly hostile manner and have made no attempt to work with us.

So, I'm helping lead the effort to completely purge them from our ecosystem. On the one hand, I'm sad because their stuff is pretty good. On the other hand, their behavior is bad and the product isn't better by the amount they're asking for.

Good riddance.

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#50

Post by sonofhans »

lxgr wrote: post #41
sonofhans wrote: post #35

This is really elegant. What a nice solution; single-step and reversible. It’s also excellent documentation, written by someone who clearly knows their audience. It keeps all operations in GUI-land, which most users consider more safe. It avoids almost all technical explanations. Folks responding with “Terminal is easier” are missing context. You’re not the audience. The fact that you can come up with seven solutions…

> It keeps all operations in GUI-land, which most users consider more safe. Which is unfortunately exactly what enables so many tech support scams, so I'm not sure it's a pattern worth reinforcing. In addition to that, while it might still be helpful for completely non-technical users, I really don't think "avoiding the terminal and edits to files" is a desirable goal for anyone studying either Python or data analyti…

Notoriously, people get to desire their own goals, and there’s little that we can do about it. Plenty of people desire to learn and use Python without the terminal. That’s 100% possible in a professional environment today, never mind a classroom.

Most people learn computers because they want to get better at a task, like programming. The point of this post is to help people get unstuck so they can begin learning at all. Adding more gates in front isn’t going to help.

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