I'm switching to Python and actually liking it

Post by dapperdrake » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 3:43 AM UTC

zahlman wrote: post #525

frollogaston wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was talking about pip, not venv. I don't use venv either, not because I think it's a bad idea but because I can't be bothered. Stuff does end up conflicting unless I use Docker (lol) or uv.

If you use uv you are using virtual environments . You're merely being shielded from a few minutes worth of education about how they work ( https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2018/09/04/python-virtual-envi... ).

Post by dapperdrake » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 3:50 AM UTC

nomel wrote: post #389

turtlebits wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should always use virtual envs. They're a single directory, how are they an abyss? Pip now complains if you try to install a package system wide.

> You should always use virtual envs. If you're not using dependencies, and are writing 3.x code, there's very little justification.

Post by dapperdrake » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 3:55 AM UTC

zahlman wrote: post #523

CoolCold wrote: post #55

> Not only because the syntax is more human-friendly, but also because the Python interpreter is natively integrated in all Unix distros That's kind of very optimistic evaluation - literally anything beyond "import json" will likely lead you into the abyss of virtual envs. Running something created with say Python 3.13.x on Ubuntu 22.04 or even 24.04 (LTSs) / Rocky 9 and the whole can of worms opened. things like vir…

I agree that the built-in Python is typically not suitable for development, especially if you're planning to distribute your code and/or care about the versions of its dependencies. (And especially on Debian and its derivatives, in my experience; they even remove parts of the standard library , like Tkinter [0].) I disagree that virtual environments represent an "abyss". It takes very little effort to learn how they…

Post by dapperdrake » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 4:00 AM UTC

kelvinjps10 wrote: post #507

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #358

Maybe I'm the only one that finds Python simultaneously verbose and lacking? Either you need 500 dependencies to do something in a simple way, or you need dozens (if not hundreds) of lines to do trivial things. I avoid writing Python because there's so much bullshit to add. Much prefer Perl, I can actually get things done quickly. Python feels like programming for the sake of programming.

Python is a language that the standard lib is big enough that you don't need dependencies

Post by dapperdrake » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 4:03 AM UTC

odyssey7 wrote: post #486

yunwal wrote: post #479

For me, python is the closest thing to writing pseudocode that functions. Every time I have the instinct to gloss over a thing when writing it down (because it feels obvious in my head), it turns out that python has an intuitive abstraction for it. Coming from a mathy background I found it incredibly satisfying, although I’ve come around to other languages since.

As a mathy person myself, I find the OOP leaning difficult to think about. Better equational reasoning, better lambdas, fewer side effects to worry about, avoiding mutation so that I can define something and still know what it is later during runtime, those are what help me think clearly. To me OOP is about the furthest paradigm from math that I’ve used.