Python's Missing Batteries: Essential Libraries You're Missing Out On

https://martinheinz.dev/blog/96

by rbanffy • 3 years ago

36 6 3 years ago

martinheinz.dev

aranke• 3 years ago

I highly recommend checking out rich to replace stackprinter and tqdm from the article (and do a lot more)

https://github.com/Textualize/rich

gymbeaux2• 3 years ago

This is why I prioritize “existing libraries” when investigating which programming language to use for something, and Python almost always delivers in this area. The tooling is probably a close second. If it sucks to develop software with a language, I don’t want to use that language.

Can anyone guess which languages I use most and enjoy the most? It’s Python and C#!

snowe2010• 3 years ago

Wait, you think Python has good tooling? It’s literally bottom of the barrel of all the languages I’ve used. There is literally an ongoing argument about the new Rye tool that just got released because it brings the number of tools needed/used for Python just for _building_ up to 15!

winrid• 3 years ago

The debugging/repl experience is pretty good, at least.

BerislavLopac• 3 years ago

The key problem with Python tooling has been that, for a long time, there was a lack of good standardisation for various common functionalities, and the implementation details of independently developed tools became de facto standards: configparser's INI files for configuration [0], pip's requirements file [1] for dependency specifications and lock files, setuptool's setup.py (and later setup.cfg) [2], etc.

Only recently, starting with PEP 518 [3], the core team has started a drive to define global standards for tools that affect general segments like building, dependency specifications and the like, which was then continued with PEP 508 [4] or PEP 621 [5] (we are still missing a standard for a universal lock file, but that is arguably a more difficult predicament).

Hopefully, most of the common tools will with time converge to use these standards, and switching between them should become a relatively trivial exercise. At that point it won't really matter whether you use Poetry, Hatch, PDM or Rye -- the differences will amount to trivial personal preferences, similar to what we have with cars.

[0] https://docs.python.org/3/library/configparser.html

[1] https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/reference/requirements-file-fo...

[2] https://setuptools.pypa.io/en/latest/userguide/quickstart.ht...

[3] https://peps.python.org/pep-0518/

[4] https://peps.python.org/pep-0508/

[5] https://peps.python.org/pep-0621/

gymbeaux2• 3 years ago

I was thinking more like IDEs and the debugging experience and so on. Rust for example, most people probably use IntelliJ IDEA with the Rust extension, whereas with Python I get all the niceties of Pycharm. Visual Studio seems to be colloquially regarded as one of the best if not the best IDE period. With C# you also get profiling tools from JetBrains like DotMemory.

Python's Missing Batteries: Essential Libraries You're Missing Out On

Related Stories