Hacker News Reader

Comment by just-ok | Hacker News Reader

Python’s venv dance only really comes into play if you need a third-party dependency that you haven’t installed globally. The Go dance is always necessary, which makes it slightly more annoying for short scripts or tests. I usually resort to the Go playground for them.

View on HN

> Python’s venv dance only really comes into play if you need a third-party dependency that you haven’t installed globally.

True. Though installing third-party dependencies globally is considered bad practice, since it can easily break system packages.

> The Go dance is always necessary, which makes it slightly more annoying for short scripts or tests.

Well, if you just want to compile/run a single file (or a couple of files) without third-party dependencies, `go build main.go` and `go run main.go` will work just fine, too.

I can't tell you how many time global dependencies in python have cause me headaches. Do a small project then do another small project 6 months later and the formers dependencies conflict with the latter's.

The whole concept of "only one major version of library can be installed at a time" is completely broken and is the direct cause of diamond import issues. Go designers have correctly recognized that two major versions of a library are actually two different libraries, only under the same name and the same team.

The "v2/ subdirectory" practice of versioning Go packages is one of the things I love the most about Go. Combined with the "packages are directories" philosophy, it makes it easy to use as many major versions of the library as you want, without any complications whatsoever.

It's such a nightmare for internal scripts. Even for ruby shops where theoretically bundler solves the problem there's all these cowboys with ten external dependencies and no lockfile

I use Go and Python both for short scripts and tests in a very similar way, when the Standard Library covers my needs.

     echo 'package main
 import "fmt"
 func main() { fmt.Println("hello"); }
 ' > foo.go && go run foo.go

But once I have to worry about dependencies, I do prefer Go's "pretend you are a module" dance vs. Python's "discover the differences between your install and the author's install" dance.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com