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Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade

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Re: Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade

#681

Post by throwup238 »

thayne wrote: post #657
miki123211 wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish we had a language that had the syntax of Python (notably including operator overloading, which is absolutely critical for neural networks, ML, data science and numerical computations), the performance, compile times and concurrency support of Go, the type system flexibility of Typescript, and the native platform integration of C/C++.

Rust doesn't quite hit all of those, but it hits a lot of them. It's syntax is significantly different from python, but it does have operator overloading. It's performance is comparable to go, and has good concurrency support, although it is different than go, and there are still some rough edges with "async" code. Compile times aren't as good as go though. The type system is excellent, although I'm not really sure w…

Rust’s compile times are crippling and its type system is easily one of the most rigid of all type systems (lifetimes are part of the type!). The latter is one of Rust’s main selling points because it allows encoding business rules into affine types, but that’s very very far from flexible especially when compared to Typescript (or Python or Haskell and their many ways of polymorphism). Traits add an orthogonal axis of flexibility but they’re still limited by lifetimes (see async_trait and generic associated types and specialization).

“Flexible” means the range from gradual typing (‘any’) to Turing complete conditional types that can do stuff like string parsing (for better or for worse). Structural typing vs instanceof and so on.

There’s really no comparison between Typescript’s type system and Rust’s. It’s worth noting though that Typescript is a bolted on typesystem that has explicitly traded soundness for flexibility. That’s the real tradeoff between Rust and TS IMHO. Rust is sound and expressive but not flexible, while Typescript is expressive and flexible but not sound.

Re: Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade

#682

Post by gempir »

BrenBarn wrote: post #659

The sticking point for me is the way tools like uv and poetry build everything around the idea of a "project". I don't want a separate environment for every project, and I don't want to start by creating a project. I want to start with an environment that has stuff in it, and I start fiddling around, and gradually something comes together that eventually will be pulled out into a separate project. From what I can see…

This is easier to do with uv than it is with pip.

You can create venvs wherever you please and then just install stuff into them. Nobody forces the project onto you, at work we don't even use the .toml yet because it's relatively new, we still use a python_requirements.txt and install into a venv that is global to the system.

Re: Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade

#684

Post by spooky_deep »

ActorNightly wrote: post #623
ederamen wrote: post #517

Uv is so good. I'm a curmudgeon about adopting new tooling, and tried uv with a lot of skepticism, but it was just better in every way. And even if it wasn't so polished and reliable, the raw speed makes it hard to go back to any other tool. Uv combined with type hints reaching critical mass in the Python ecosystem, and how solid PyLance is in VSCode, feels so good it has made me consider investing in Python as my pr…

> But then I remember that Python is dog slow compared to other languages with comparable ergonomics and first-class support for static typing, and...idk it's a tough sell. Post like these aptly describe why companies are downsizing in lieu of AI assistants, and they are not wrong for doing so. Yes, Python is "slow". The thing is, compute is cheap these days and development time is expensive. $1000 per month is consi…

The irony here is UV is written in Rust.

Re: Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade

#685

Post by cluckindan »

oblio wrote: post #173
j45 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a comment just about Python.. but it should just work. There shouldn't be constant ceremony for getting and keeping environments running.

There are basically 0 other programming languages that use the "directory/shell integration activated virtual environment", outside of Python. How does the rest of the world manage to survive without venvs? Config files in the directory. Shocking, really :-)))

Node.js does, if you use fnm or nvm.

Re: Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade

#686

Post by teiferer »

ederamen wrote: post #517

Uv is so good. I'm a curmudgeon about adopting new tooling, and tried uv with a lot of skepticism, but it was just better in every way. And even if it wasn't so polished and reliable, the raw speed makes it hard to go back to any other tool. Uv combined with type hints reaching critical mass in the Python ecosystem, and how solid PyLance is in VSCode, feels so good it has made me consider investing in Python as my pr…

> But then I remember that Python is dog slow compared to other languages with comparable ergonomics and first-class support for static typing, and...idk it's a tough sell.

Case in point: uv itself is not written in Python. It's a Rust tool.

It always amazes me when people work on an ecosystem for a language but then don't buy enough into that to actually use it to do the work.

Avoidance of dogfooding is a big red flag to me.

Re: Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade

#687

Post by cluckindan »

roflyear wrote: post #235
oblio wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are basically 0 other programming languages that use the "directory/shell integration activated virtual environment", outside of Python. How does the rest of the world manage to survive without venvs? Config files in the directory. Shocking, really :-)))

what happens when you have two projects using different versions of node, etc? isn't that a massive headache? not that it's great to start with, but it does happen, no?

You create a .node-version file and use fnm or nvm, and presto, when you cd into a project dir, the corresponding node version is activated.

Installing a particular node version also becomes as easy as

    fnm install 24

Re: Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade

#688

Post by jampekka »

Uehreka wrote: post #677
BrenBarn wrote: post #659

The sticking point for me is the way tools like uv and poetry build everything around the idea of a "project". I don't want a separate environment for every project, and I don't want to start by creating a project. I want to start with an environment that has stuff in it, and I start fiddling around, and gradually something comes together that eventually will be pulled out into a separate project. From what I can see…

This was always my issue with pip and venv: I don’t want a thing that hijacks my terminal and PATH, flips my world upside down and makes writing automated headless scripts and systemd services a huge pain. When I drop into a Node.js project, usually some things have changed, but I always know that if I need to, I can find all of my dependencies in my node_modules folder, and I can package up that folder and move it w…

Having a directory like node_modules containing the dependencies is such an obviously good choice, it's sad how Python steering council actively resists this with what I find odd arguments.

I think a lot of the decades old farce of Python package management would have been solved by this.

https://peps.python.org/pep-0582/

https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-582-python-local-packages-d...

Re: Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade

#689

Post by t43562 »

Jaxkr wrote: post #520
ederamen wrote: post #517

Uv is so good. I'm a curmudgeon about adopting new tooling, and tried uv with a lot of skepticism, but it was just better in every way. And even if it wasn't so polished and reliable, the raw speed makes it hard to go back to any other tool. Uv combined with type hints reaching critical mass in the Python ecosystem, and how solid PyLance is in VSCode, feels so good it has made me consider investing in Python as my pr…

On performance: 3.13 removed the GIL and added experimental first-party JIT (like PyPy). In two years I bet we’ll be seeing v8 level performance out of CPython.

pypy is probably faster. Lets put effort into that. BUT the dynamic features that make python lovely are always going to limit its performance.

If you're using python because you have to then you might not like all that and might see it as something to toss out. This makes me sad.

Re: Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade

#690

Post by t43562 »

motoboi wrote: post #533
Jaxkr wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On performance: 3.13 removed the GIL and added experimental first-party JIT (like PyPy). In two years I bet we’ll be seeing v8 level performance out of CPython.

I bet we’ll be seeing python compiled to JVM of getting JVM levels of performance. Much better than v8

Try https://www.graalvm.org/python/
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