81–90 of 192 posts
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*by Nadia Eghbal EDIT: or are you rather thinking about the book Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software ?
Actually, since 2022, Nadia Asparouhova :) From a 2022 email: > (P.S. I have a new last name! Still transitioning everything over, but I’m now Nadia Asparouhova.)
Here the website of the author: https://nadia.xyz/
I must be the only one in here who thinks $1.5M is a small sum compared to Anthropic's size and the amount of value they have gotten out of Python. Good press is cheaper than I thought.
You are right, it is. But it would be a mistake for us to use this opportunity to attack them for it. We should applaud their donation today, and at another time assess the meager contributions of many companies that should be shamed.
I've worked at a few that use the 'mold' linker to dramatically reduce their build times. Again, very few contribute. In this particular case, I managed to get one former employer to make a donation.
But the list goes on.
Short arms, deep pockets, as the saying goes.
Still crazy how little investment goes to Python given how critical it is to the ecosystem.
Poor management has played a role. They refused to invest in packaging to the extent that a separate company (astral) had to do it for them. Bugs closed for years with the excuse “we’re only volunteers.” Meanwhile, “outreach” was funded for several million a year. Not confidence inspiring. Maybe would have improved if the funds had been spent more appropriately. Similar story with Mozilla.
Why is that? Is there lessons to be learned from the Linux Foundation how to actually effectively and responsibly manage that sort of money, in those types of projects?
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You are right, it is. But it would be a mistake for us to use this opportunity to attack them for it. We should applaud their donation today, and at another time assess the meager contributions of many companies that should be shamed.
Every single financial institution on Wall Street, the City of London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Dubai and so on, uses Python. Very few contribute. I've worked at a few that use the 'mold' linker to dramatically reduce their build times. Again, very few contribute. In this particular case, I managed to get one former employer to make a donation. But the list goes on. Short arms, deep pockets, as the saying goes.
If python wants to require money for updates or for customers over $X in revenue, they can!
If companies don’t want to donate, they don’t have to just as python contributors don’t have to if they’re annoyed at how it’s used.
Still crazy how little investment goes to Python given how critical it is to the ecosystem.
Poor management has played a role. They refused to invest in packaging to the extent that a separate company (astral) had to do it for them. Bugs closed for years with the excuse “we’re only volunteers.” Meanwhile, “outreach” was funded for several million a year. Not confidence inspiring. Maybe would have improved if the funds had been spent more appropriately. Similar story with Mozilla.
[0] https://www.python.org/psf/annual-report/2024/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outreach
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Is it static or dynamic? Whatever rust is that python isn’t.
Python type hints are static - at the moment, they are advisory only, but there is an obvious route forward to making Python an (optionally) fully statically typed language by using static type checking on programs before execution.
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I don’t get this argument because if we put the effort to get it typed, we don’t get one of the best benefits - performance.
But that's not the argument here. Python type hints allow checking correctness statically, which is what matters for agents.
Not really. You can do some basic checking, like ensuring you don't pass a string into where an integer is expected, but your tests required to make sure that you're properly dealing with those integers (Python type hints aren't nearly capable enough to forgo that) would catch that anyway. The LLM doesn't care if the error comes from a type checker or test suite.
When you get into real statically typed languages there isn't much consideration for Python. Perhaps you can prompt an LLM to build you an extractor, but otherwise, based on what already exists, your best bet is likely Lean extracted to C, imported as a Python module. Easier would be to cut Python out of the picture, though.
If you are satisfied with the SMT middle-ground, Dafny does support Python as a target. But as the earlier commenter said: Types are best.
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All this but none of the performance benefits.
If your code is talking to an LLM, the performance difference between rust and python represents < 0.1% of the time you spend waiting for computers to do stuff. It's just not an important difference.
Seems like a good time to throw out a reminder regarding "Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure" by Nadia Asparouhova. While she may have published it in 2016, it's still relevant today and speaks to the need for the private sector generally (looking at you VC firms) to support and understand the open source work, hours of unfunded labor, powering our societies. https://www.fordfoundat…
Big Tech should really be footing the bill here as well as large established VC firms.