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Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

paulromer.net

231–240 of 286 posts

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#232
This seems to come from a place that "learning virtual environments is too much work". I do not agree with that premise. Having a lab where you introduce environments and the command line (which you can do in a single class for the types of students Paul is talking about) is not a big deal and to me is a good use of time.

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because every option sucks for teaching. C/C++? Full of footguns. Java/C#? Too complicated for beginners. Pascal? Outdated. Etc. I personally prefer C to teach first-year CS students but just as the lesser evil. A good first programming language is sorely lacking. (Note that I'm talking about the imperative programming paradigm. The debate on whether one should start with functional programming is outside the scope o…

How in the world is c# too complicated? Console app, top level statements, vs code. As easy as Python. Easier because your env isn’t messed up. If they can’t manage that they have no business doing data science or something similar to begin with

You sound like you have been doing this for way too long to know what it takes to teach beginners.

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How in the world is c# too complicated? Console app, top level statements, vs code. As easy as Python. Easier because your env isn’t messed up. If they can’t manage that they have no business doing data science or something similar to begin with

You sound like you have been doing this for way too long to know what it takes to teach beginners.

Not for complete but for beginners lightly familiar with programming it is overall not difficult to teach the basics, often easier than to stubborn seniors who want to do it their way only :)

    var start = "commtext c00\">";
    var end = "";

    using var http = new HttpClient();
    var page = await http.GetStringAsync("https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41425416");

    var commStart = page.IndexOf(start) + start.Length;
    var commEnd = page.IndexOf(end, commStart);

    Console.WriteLine(page[commStart..commEnd]);
or

    var host = WebApplication
        .CreateBuilder()
        .Build();

    host.MapGet("/", () => "Hello World");
    host.Run("http://+:8080");

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#235
post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> use by individual hobbyists, students, universities, non-profit organizations, or businesses with less than 200 employees is allowed, and all other usage is considered commercial and thus requires a business relationship with Anaconda Wow this is so deliberately ambiguous about universities with more than 200 employees. Shameful.

I posted an update about this: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pzwang_hi-everyone-recently-t... TLDR - we are working to clean up this language to leave it clear that educational institutions are exempt, and that these commercial terms do not apply to third-party channels hosted at anaconda.org (which includes conda-forge).

You’ve had the existing language up for years. Your licensing regime is a dark pattern torpedoing anything Good about Anaconda. Anaconda is threatening academic researchers for back usage in something those researchers thought was free.

Show us don’t tell us. I’d love to not have to continue the rip and replace job ahead.

Edit: this linkedin response sums it up well. Not certain what guarantee you will make to research institutions’ leaders that is going to lift those blocks.

However, please tell this to your sales/legal teams: the nature of their approaches has been somewhat poisoning the well. If leadership’s first encounter with a piece of software is: "you are in legal trouble", the reaction you're going to get is: "remove and block that legally dangerous piece of software at once", rather than "oh yes we should license it". We do buy licenses for software, we view it as giving back, but how the offering is first presented matters.

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#236
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python's package management makes JavaScript look well thought out and sane. The bar is so low, you have to excavate it from a landfill of rotten node_modules...

Node.js has (or at least had before the ES6 mess) the sanest and best thought out package manager out there.

NPM’s original sin was making package installation and general management so painless that folks installed micro packages for everything. Can’t really fault the software for that.

The issue was, as you say, the introduction of ESM. It used to be that you required modules one way and one way only (yes there was AMD for advanced use cases, but it was an add-on), then people felt the need to “standardize” that, no we have this mess of ESM and CJS.

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#237
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you thinking arithmetic, trigonometry, geometry, analysis or statistics?

statistics is not mathematics -- real

statistics really is not mathematics according to serious math people. It feels like "eternal September" with your replies.

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#239
post #169

> 10. What Changes When You Are Free > You will not be forced to work inside something known as a “virtual environment.” Oof, this terrible advice cancels out an otherwise reasonable post. Beginners who don't know what they're doing are the last people who should be `pip install -r requirements.txt`-ing into the system Python the way this article is recommending. That's not only going to make working on multiple proj…

IMO what needs to happen is python needs to get rid of system installs and only work via venv. It should check the current folder for some .venv or something and auto-config itself to the current directory (or complain that you need to config with a messages like "python not configured for current folder. Run 'source bin/activate' to configure. Honestly thought that could be so much better. The entire problem of pyth…

I always set:

    export PIP_REQUIRE_VIRTUALENV=true

Re: Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

two second search -- "Statistics is considered a mathematical science that is distinct from mathematics, though it does use mathematical methods:" "statistics arguably is not a branch of mathematics. It is a mathematical science, built upon the mathematical discipline of probability. Some ways in which mathematics and Statistics differ include: Statistics often does not produce definitive conclusions whereas mathemat…

In other two second searches: Lab Leak is Real, Ivermectin cures COVID, 9-11 was an inside job. LLM's give you what you want to hear. Now get some live quotes, both for and against, from actual working mathematicians. There are a lot of definitive conclusions about lines | planes | surfaces that "best fit", by many metrics, sampled data, etc.

this has nothing to do with LLMs at all.. you are uninformed about the old feud between mathematics and statistics so you claim this is not true.

anyway, on reflection, the word "is" does not fit here.. statistics and mathematics are not disjoint, but no, statistics is not a field of mathematics.. ask around among people with serious graduate studies in mathematics and they will fill you in.. Maybe it overlaps into the academic practice and their department structure too.

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