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Comment by dgfitz | Hacker News Reader

I pip3 installed something today. It didn’t work, at all.

I then yum installed a lib and headers, it worked well.

C++ on an msft platform is the worst. I can’t speak for Mac. C++ on a linux is quite pleasant. Feels like most of the comments like yours are biased for un-stated reasons.

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This has nothing to do with languages. You can yum install python packages and expect them to work fine. You can install C++ files using an actual dependency manager like vcpkg or conan and have issues.

You're pointing out differences between software package management styles, not languages.

C++ on linux is indeed pleasant if you use only distro-provided library versions. Some specialized library with specific version, also no big deal. Need some upgraded version of a widely-used library -- get containerized or prepare for real pain.

If I had a penny for every time I gave up on compiling C++ software because there's no way to know what dependencies it needs, I'd be a millionaire. Python at least lists them.

If I had a penny every time I heard something like that on sites like this, I’d be a billionaire :)

Is that because the compiler failed with "foo.h not found" or the build system said "libfoo not found"? CMake is most common and it will tell you. Worst case it's difficult to derive the package name from the name in the diagnostic.

It's not great, but usually not a big deal neither IME. Typically a couple of minutes to e.g. find that required libSDL2 addon module or whatever, if there is that kind of problem at all.

Yes it is, and it's usually such a big deal for me that I just don't use that software. I don't have time to go through a loop of "what's the file name? What package is it in? Install, repeat". This is by far the worst experience I've had with any language. Python has been a breeze in comparison.

I’m not going to refute your points. If you’re going to wear rose-tinted glasses about all of the bad parts about python, that’s fine, I also like python.

What's rose-tinted about "one of them downloads dependencies automatically, the other one doesn't"?

I mean this is a documentation problem. It's pretty common for python to import something it doesn't say it depends on too, btw...

Have you tried vcpkg on msft (work on linux and mac too btw)? I found it to be much better than pip3 and venv nonsense.

Mac has the Brew project, which is sort of like apt-get or yum.

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