nytpu the wyvern

It's astonishing how the Python ecosystem is fucking quicksand even worse than Javascript is. I have not yet encountered a nontrivial Python program that still functioned after not being maintained for literally <6 months.

Like holy shit, the language breaks incessantly so it's literally impossible to have older programs just installed globally (or have a script dropped in ~/bin/, etc.) rather than needing to use a developer environment like venvs for every single individual program; and the library ecosystem is even worse with constant breakages (even with pinned semver versions, devs will seemingly go out of their way to obliterate packages off of repos so they can't be downloaded anymore, or deliberately make breaking point releases)

Zig is still being developed so they have an excuse when they break every unmaintained program every six months, what's Python's excuse?

Feb 27 at 7:05pmWeb
Show threadnytpu the wyvernFeb 27
I've been able to run every Common Lisp program I've come across (including ones using external libraries) that haven't been updated since literally the 90s, despite using a Lisp implementation that didn't exist then and using brand-new releases of the libraries they used (and note that many of those libraries have been maintained since the 90s)
Show threadthe Hearth Feb 27
@nytpu more things should be official immutable standards
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Show threadthe Hearth Feb 27
@nytpu i don't know if lisp is but i know C is. and vhdl
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Show threadthe Hearth Feb 27
@nytpu i think verilog too
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Show threadnytpu the wyvernFeb 27

@Hearth
Common Lisp is the most extreme example because the standard has not had a single revision since 1994 (the language is so introspectable and modifiable that any deficiencies in the spec can be fixed by de facto standard libraries). I've run brand-new programs on Macintosh Common Lisp (1992) with almost no modifications, and vice-versa.

While C has a revised standard every decade or so (although still decent backward compatibility).

VHDL definitely adopts Ada's stance which is excellent backwards compatibility (Ada has seen significant changes VHDL hasn't, but it's trivial to mix and match old and new source files in the same project, etc.)

And Verilog is weird because the original Verilog was not meant to be an HDL but rather a simulation language (hence not having explicit support for basic hardware stuff like flip-flops while supporting many things that were software-only like file I/O), so then Verilog-2005 tried and sorta failed to fix that, so they then created SystemVerilog, but then Verilog got deprecated and wholesale replaced by SystemVerilog so there's some compatibility but it depends on the lineage you're using and ughhh. But in practice I think the compatibility is good there too

Show threadthe Hearth Feb 27

@nytpu vhdl is the one we learned how to use in school, at least

i think the standard we interact with most is the gerber format though. which has a couple of extensions of varying compatibility
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Show threadthe Hearth Feb 27
@nytpu but at least x3 is a superset of x2, and x2 is a superset of x1, and no one uses the original format anymore
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Show threadthe Hearth Feb 27
@nytpu i guess assembly is generally immutable too, for as long as they continue to make the processors the specific assembly language applies to
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Show threadJob SnijdersFeb 27
@nytpu for this reason I mostly stopped writing new python 😞
Show threadBitslingers-R-UsFeb 27

@nytpu I call this the sticky tape problem.

Some people will put sticky tape on things (I worked in post production, and putting tape on cables and other things was common). When you go to take the tape off after a few days or few weeks, there’s no problem.

However, once their project was done months or sometimes years later, and it was time for me to clean up what they left, taking the tape off left all this sticky, gooey, disgusting and hard to clean off gunk.

When you tell people about the disgusting gunk, they say I’m exaggerating or making it up because they never see it. They don’t get that someone still has to deal with their poor decisions after they’ve gone.

Python and Ruby suffer from the sticky tape problem.

On the other hand, I’ve never in my life had to check the version of /bin/sh.

sh -version NetBSD shell: 20220122 REJECT_NULS
Show threadColinFeb 27
@nytpu friends don’t let friends get into python.
Show threadWolf480plFeb 27
@nytpu
it wasn't always like that...
Show threadWolf480plFeb 27
@nytpu
btw quicksand is a very good word to describe it
Show threadjraFeb 28
@nytpu The final stage of the ecosystem is a Monty Python sketch. Starts off with regular, commonplace interactions between multiple entities, but as time goes on, the surrealism keeps pilling up and suddenly we're at the center of a fish-slapping session between global packages and venvs.
Show thread"Musty Bits" McGeeMar 3
@nytpu between that and how fucked up packaging an app to ship is I bailed. Now python in my tool chain is like a hangnail