Reject modernity

Return to C

Python 3.13 is adding support for removing GIL, via PEP 703

Python is just a pile of dicts/hashtables under the hood. Even the basic int type is actually a dict of method names:

x = 1;
print(dir(x))
['__abs__', '__add__', '__and__', '__bool__', '__ceil__', '__class__', '__delattr__', '__dir__', ... ]

PS: I will never get away from the fact that user-space memory addresses are also basically keys into the page table, so it is hashtables all the way down - you cannot escape them.

This is why I decided to learn Nix. I built dev environment flakes that provision the devshell for any language I intend to use. I actually won’t even bother unless I can get something working reliably with Nix. ;)

For example, here’s a flake that I use for my Python dev environment to provide all needed wiring and setup for an interactive Python web scraper I built:

{
  description = "Interactive Web Scraper";

  inputs = {
    nixpkgs.url = "github:NixOS/nixpkgs?ref=nixpkgs-unstable";
    utils.url = "github:numtide/flake-utils";
  };

  outputs = { self, nixpkgs, utils }: utils.lib.eachSystem ["x86_64-linux"] (system: let
    pkgs = import nixpkgs { system = system; };
  in rec {
    packages = {
      pyinputplus = pkgs.python3Packages.buildPythonPackage rec {
        pname = "pyinputplus";
        version = "0.2.12";
        src = pkgs.fetchPypi {
          inherit pname version;
          sha256 = "sha256-YOUR_SHA256_HASH_HERE";
        };
      };

      pythonEnv =
        pkgs.python3.withPackages (ps: with ps; [ webdriver-manager openpyxl pandas requests beautifulsoup4 websocket-client selenium packages.pyinputplus ]);
    };

    devShell = pkgs.mkShell {
      buildInputs = [
        pkgs.chromium
        pkgs.undetected-chromedriver
        packages.pythonEnv
      ];

      shellHook = ''
        export PATH=${pkgs.chromium}/bin:${pkgs.undetected-chromedriver}/bin:$PATH
      '';
    };
  });
}

This a much better done meme

The other one before makes zero sense

Good meme. However I do think that most people starting out will not really have to deal with any of those issues in the first few years apart from maybe the pip/venv/poetry/etc choice. But whatever they’ll pick it’ll probably work well enough for whatever they’re doing. When I started out I didn’t use any external libraries apart from pygame (which probably came pre-installed). I programmed in the IDLE editor that came with Python. I have no idea how I functioned that way, but I learnt a lot and hat plenty of fun.

Man, the variable scoping thing is insidious. It will never not be weird to me that ifs and loops don’t actually create a new scope.

And then you try to do a closure and it tells you you didn’t import anything yet.

I find Python easy to just code a prototype with. But I find Rust easier to get right.

Sooo… switch to Perl then? 😜