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What if Python was natively distributable?

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Re: What if Python was natively distributable?

#11

Post by hosh »

Meanwhile, in BEAM land, this is a solved problem, and just watching different languages converge into towards the set of primitives and constraints. It is hard to replicate BEAM’s premptive scheduler, but I would not be surprised if someone will end up thinking they invented something novel by adding queues (mailboxes), or failing that, something like go channels.

And even then, once you have a workable set of primitives, it turns out that there are some orchestration patterns that recurs over and over again, so people will converge towards OTP once the primitives are there.

Re: What if Python was natively distributable?

#12

Post by lelanthran »

ericreg92 wrote: post #3

Whats curious to me here is that the github repo linked to in the article seems to exactly recreate the "operating system" that is called an "opinion in the wrong layer". Perhaps I am misunderstanding this, but after looking at the code what exactly are we achieving here over other frameworks? The repo is obviously very new (and the author certainly seems busy), so perhaps a better question is what do we aim to achie…

> Regardless, I love ambitious projects furiously coded by one crazy person.

Me too; the world lost a treasure, once.

RIP Terry Davis. There was so much to be learned from your approach.

Re: What if Python was natively distributable?

#13

Post by lelanthran »

Pah - all these newcomers with interpreted/bytecode languages for remote functions!

It's easy to send text or bytecode to another instance of your runtime. I did a distributed system sending native code functions to be executed remotely.

Fair enough, it was for academic purposes, but it worked[1].

-------------------------------------

[1] By "worked" I mean got a passing grade on a thesis that got an IMDB number. Probably still got the actual PDF somewhere, or maybe it was indexed by google at some point.

Re: What if Python was natively distributable?

#14

Post by rao-v »

blopker wrote: post #9

Every time I see something like this (turn function calls into a network call), I reflect fondly on the list of fallacies in distributed computing [0]. These are issues that largely have to be handled in an application-specific way, and cannot be solved in the general case. This list alone has saved me many late debugging nights, just by not making or using systems that ignore the list. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/…

I generally agree but I value projects like this because there are smaller scale environments where many of these fallacies are perfectly fine working hypotheses. My home lab or a low volume, low 9s service etc.

Re: What if Python was natively distributable?

#15

Post by mikkupikku »

MomsAVoxell wrote: post #4

I ask this question, but instead: I ask it of Lua. As in, what if there was a Linux distro that focused, primarily, on building a Lua layer on top of everything, system-wise. Just replace all the standard stuff with one single, system-friendly language: Lua. C/C++ everything as it currently is: put Lua on top all the way to the Desktop. It’s only a thought experiment, except there are cases where I can see a way to u…

Do it. Build on the work of AwesomeWM probably, it's a Lua focused window manager that's quite nice. You can also build up less "minimalist" widgets and whatnot using Lua and claude code, which is very good at unconventional GUI work in Lua. I can attest to this specifically, I've had it build numerous GUIs with mpv Lua userscripts.

Re: What if Python was natively distributable?

#16

Post by Lvl999Noob »

MomsAVoxell wrote: post #4

I ask this question, but instead: I ask it of Lua. As in, what if there was a Linux distro that focused, primarily, on building a Lua layer on top of everything, system-wise. Just replace all the standard stuff with one single, system-friendly language: Lua. C/C++ everything as it currently is: put Lua on top all the way to the Desktop. It’s only a thought experiment, except there are cases where I can see a way to u…

Wouldn't you face the same problem as Dotnet on Windows? AFAIK, dotnet based frameworks and apps suffered from huge performance issues. It might have improved in recent times, I am not actually a windows dev.

If just the end user application is in Lua, then maybe it's fine and the high level language slowdown won't matter. If you want to wrap the low level kernel APIs etc in a high level language as the canonical interface, I would be very skeptical.

Re: What if Python was natively distributable?

#17

Post by MomsAVoxell »

Lvl999Noob wrote: post #16
MomsAVoxell wrote: post #4

I ask this question, but instead: I ask it of Lua. As in, what if there was a Linux distro that focused, primarily, on building a Lua layer on top of everything, system-wise. Just replace all the standard stuff with one single, system-friendly language: Lua. C/C++ everything as it currently is: put Lua on top all the way to the Desktop. It’s only a thought experiment, except there are cases where I can see a way to u…

Wouldn't you face the same problem as Dotnet on Windows? AFAIK, dotnet based frameworks and apps suffered from huge performance issues. It might have improved in recent times, I am not actually a windows dev. If just the end user application is in Lua, then maybe it's fine and the high level language slowdown won't matter. If you want to wrap the low level kernel APIs etc in a high level language as the canonical int…

I’m not sure the ‘language slowdown’ is as significant as one might think, given the common shared libs that would be in place with a one-size-fits-all solution, but its really all just a dream until someone does it, anyway.

Re: What if Python was natively distributable?

#18

Post by jjtheblunt »

extr wrote: post #8

LLM generated article.

I wonder if an LLM generated article would get the title to use proper English, though: "What if Python were natively distributable?".

It's possible LLMs pick up improper English, of course, since proper is some measure of what used to be a norm, but may presently be perceived as outdated.

Re: What if Python was natively distributable?

#20

Post by interiorchurch »

MomsAVoxell wrote: post #4

I ask this question, but instead: I ask it of Lua. As in, what if there was a Linux distro that focused, primarily, on building a Lua layer on top of everything, system-wise. Just replace all the standard stuff with one single, system-friendly language: Lua. C/C++ everything as it currently is: put Lua on top all the way to the Desktop. It’s only a thought experiment, except there are cases where I can see a way to u…

There used to be a roguelike game called Angband, which was written in C. There was a vibrant community around it, many of whom produced Angband variants by hacking the text config files and the C code. One developer got the idea of making most of the game scriptable in Lua, over a C core; which would, in theory, make even more people be able to hack at the game and produce variants.

What happened was the Angband community imploded, and the number of variants went way down.

I don't know if this is a generalizable example and there may have been other factors at work, but it is a cautionary tale.

Angband is still around btw, and is still excellent. But I believe it's C and text config files again now.

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