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Is Python's tooling incredibly difficult, or am I just stupid? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 week ago by zaphodb2002@sh.itjust.works to c/programming@programming.dev

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So I'm no expert, but I have been a hobbyist C and Rust dev for a while now, and I've installed tons of programs from GitHub and whatnot that required manual compilation or other hoops to jump through, but I am constantly befuddled installing python apps. They seem to always need a very specific (often outdated) version of python, require a bunch of venv nonsense, googling gives tons of outdated info that no longer works, and generally seem incredibly not portable. As someone who doesn't work in python, it seems more obtuse than any other language's ecosystem. Why is it like this?

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[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 35 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

No, it's not just you, Python's tooling is a mess. It's not necessarily anyone's fault, but there are a ton of options and a lot of very similarly named things that accomplish different (but sometimes similar) tasks. (pyenv, venv, and virtualenv come to mind.) As someone who considers themselves between beginner and intermediate proficiency in Python, this is my biggest hurdle right now.

[–] NostraDavid@programming.dev 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Python’s tooling is a mess.

Not only that. It's a historic mess. Over the years, growing a better and better toolset left a lot of projects in a very messy state. So many answers on Stack Overflow that mention easy_install - I still don't know what it is, but I guess it was some kind of proto uv.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 6 points 1 week ago

Every time I'm doing anything with Python I ask myself if Java's tooling is this complicated or I'm just used to it by now. I think a big part of the weirdness is that a lot of Python tooling is tied to the Python installation whereas in Java things like Maven and Gradle are separate. In addition, I think dependencies you install get tied to that Python installation, while in Java they just are in a cache for Maven/Gradle. And in the horrible scenario where you need to use different versions of Maven/Gradle (one place I was at specifically needed Maven 3.0.3 for one project and a different for a different, don't ask, it's dumb and their own fault for setting it up that way) at least they still have one common cache for everything.

I guess it also helps that with Java you (often) don't need platform specific jar files. But Python is often used as an easy and dynamic scripting interface over more performant, native code. So you don't really run into things like "this artifact doesn't have a 64 bit arm version for python 2" often with Java. But that's not a fault of Python's tooling, it's just the reality of how it's used.