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Python... F**K Python. Whenever something goes wrong on my machine, it some stupid Python application. Just wasted a whole bunch of time trying to get a markdown viewer. Even when a Python app works, a couple of years later it's guaranteed to suddenly stop working...
2023-08-08 · 3 months ago · 👍 naf
THB, I managed to do the same with Perl programs as well, something is updated and suddenly a util program does not work anymore
It would help a lot of dynamic interpreted languages like Python enforced a stringent versioning policy when it comes to the interpreter, the standard library, and any 3rd party dependencies. It is quite unrealistic to assume full forwards compatibility of all components...
You should generally be pretty safe if you do this manually, but of course that's not possible in many cases if we're talking about random apps in your Linux distro.
2023-08-09 · 3 months ago
As a JavaScript developer I can’t understand this.
The “crappy JS” ecosystem had packages and dependencies solved years ago and is constantly improving.
The “better” languages have some shenanigans still going on. The saddest of which is Python. I have lots of love and respect for Python and its developers, but its dependency management is pathetic.
since childhood i disliked interpreters. basic was slow and stupid. programs written or compiled to machine code were fast. i don't see why we need interpreters. well, maybe for lisp to have eval()?
i also don't understand why some languages are not strongly typed. whenever i wrote python, it was so hard because compiler was not helping me to catch errors earlier, then the program would explode, and then i would need to search why.
today i believe best mainstream language for programming is go - it is simple (inspired of oberon), it is compiled, it is strongly typed, it has modules.
from not really mainstream, but still a bit mainstream - pascal/freepascal/lazarus.
maybe ada is on the same line? much more consistent, and i don't know which is bigger in size - ada or modern object pascal. i think i like ada more for consistency (though i have not much experience with it), but i dislike the compiler - gnat, and dislike that it depends on gcc. i like that fpc compiler is a separate project, independent of any llvms or gccs. and i like the code it generates for some reasons. for example the code does not depend (usually) of systems glibc. they link statically their own library which calls kernel functions directly.
not not really mainstream - modula-3.
and the best of all, my favourite oberon. (:
2023-08-10 · 3 months ago
dependency hell is a completely different topic. not always you can feel safe by just downloading number of deps from the internet and building those.
afaik go has the option to mention exact commit or tag of the dependency you need.
the safest way is to stick with your operating system package manager. that code supposedly passed audit.
i also would like to mention this post i recently saw https://friend.camp/@aparrish/110816062043431740
I generate poetry from a markov chain on a microcontroller using a solar panel harvester chip and some big capacitors. i originally wrote the generator with CircuitPython, which gave me 2–3 lines of poetry per discharge from the harvester.
well I just finished reimplementing the generator in C++ and now I get... ~200 lines of poetry per discharge (!)