Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS • Hacker News Board

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#51

Post by mihaaly » Sun, Sep 01, 2024, 7:48 PM UTC

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…

Unluckily this inability of seeing with each others' eyes - and the unwilling to do so: 'it is easy!' kind of never asked for flow of oppinions, ... daaaa, it is always easy AFTER you know that -, this inability makes the software products that damn shitshow for the user.

Beyond the attention seeking 'tips of the day' kind of popups in random places and stages that derails you all the time (I mean: ALL the time) but at least so tiny little fragments of wisdom that you reamin the same clueless, well inside the error of measurement in cluelesness. Only good for putting The Product into the focus (Am I nice, eh? What a cool feature I have, eh?! Brilliant am I, eh?!) instead of the need of the users.

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#52

Post by nmstoker » Sun, Sep 01, 2024, 7:48 PM UTC

kanche wrote: post #8

williamstein wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? Is there a link?

A news on the same: https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/anaconda_puts_the_squ...

But this doesn't apply to miniconda if you use the channel conda-forge, so I'm not sure there's much need for a fuss here.

source: https://www.anaconda.com/blog/is-conda-free

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#53

Post by drozycki » Sun, Sep 01, 2024, 7:49 PM UTC

fhdsgbbcaA wrote: post #5

Clickbait title (“stranglehold”, really?), and also really bad advice. Terminal can be scary, but “open terminal from Applications/Utilities” and typing “rm ~/.zsh” is objectively easier. Also that’s not even the best solution, just a far better way to do this solution.

Pythons and anacondas are snakes which catch and kill their prey by strangling them and inducing cardiac arrest. It’s a pun.

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#54

Post by bpmooch » Sun, Sep 01, 2024, 7:51 PM UTC

giantrobot wrote: post #44

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 t…

then they need to stop what they are doing, and learn how to use the system they are running first. there's no value in skipping ahead of basic "power user" learning for your preferred os. if you can't run basic commands, you dont' need to be writing python programs. if your educational institution is not providing you basic knowledge on how to use windows, macos, or linux, they are unfortunately failing you.

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#55

Post by brewmarche » Sun, Sep 01, 2024, 7:59 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #36

brewmarche wrote: post #15

You can just keep Anaconda and just use it as a pyenv replacement, e.g.: conda create -n "myenv" python=3.8 conda activate myenv Then just use pip in your environment, if you don’t like conda packages. Not sure what the paragraph about being able to install multiple Python versions after getting rid of Anaconda is about.

That's installing another 3.8 rather than using the system one, isn't it?

Yes, you can specify any Python version available in the official channel: https://anaconda.org/main/python/files

If you have license issues with the official Anaconda repos (talked about in other comments), switch to the conda-forge channel instead, it doesn’t have these restrictions: https://anaconda.org/conda-forge/python/files

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#56

Post by brewmarche » Sun, Sep 01, 2024, 8:01 PM UTC

ok123456 wrote: post #30

brewmarche wrote: post #15

You can just keep Anaconda and just use it as a pyenv replacement, e.g.: conda create -n "myenv" python=3.8 conda activate myenv Then just use pip in your environment, if you don’t like conda packages. Not sure what the paragraph about being able to install multiple Python versions after getting rid of Anaconda is about.

I had to do this, using Anaconda as a pyenv replacement, because I worked with people with many levels of IT bureaucracy. They couldn't just go to python.org, download an official release, and use it within their user profile. They were only allowed to use Anaconda because it was on a list of approved software.

Same here. It’s not that bad of a solution when you think about it.

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#57

Post by atoav » Sun, Sep 01, 2024, 8:06 PM UTC

latchkey wrote: post #43

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.

I thought a class of entirely non-tech art students how to use the commandline to run their python code within an hour and that includes distractions like people using multiple different operating systems and explai ing how paths work on each. Tech inclined students get the gist of the whole thing in less than 15 minutes.

The CLI is literally just: You write a command and a thing happens. That isn't a thing that people get hung up on. The main weirdness you need to tell them about is how to select/copy/paste and use the history. Throw in a lesson about how paths work. Sure the commands need to be remembered but for a start you basically just need pwd, cd and python/python3.

You are not doing your students a service if you try to teach them programming by shielding them from anything that could give them a feel for the systems they develope for.

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#58

Post by bwanab » Sun, Sep 01, 2024, 8:14 PM UTC

latchkey wrote: post #43

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.

Most of the kids the author is talking about aren't going to ever code for a living - they're going to code to get their job done. It's a very different mindset.

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#59

Post by chuckadams » Sun, Sep 01, 2024, 8:17 PM UTC

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…

The audience is people learning a programming language. It’s too much to ask of them to open up a file written in a different programming language and comment out a single line?

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#60

Post by rubslopes » Sun, Sep 01, 2024, 8:35 PM UTC

brewmarche wrote: post #56

ok123456 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to do this, using Anaconda as a pyenv replacement, because I worked with people with many levels of IT bureaucracy. They couldn't just go to python.org, download an official release, and use it within their user profile. They were only allowed to use Anaconda because it was on a list of approved software.

Same here. It’s not that bad of a solution when you think about it.

Anaconda (and miniconda) is a very good solution if you need a container-like environment. I can easily go back to old projects with different python versions and do maintenance in them with no hassle.