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Comment by turnsout | Hacker News Reader

You're getting a lot of comments along the lines of "Why don't you just ____," which only shows how Stockholmed the entire Python community is.

With no other language are you expected to maintain several entirely different versions of the language, each of which is a relatively large installation. Can you imagine if we all had five different llvms or gccs just to compile five different modern C projects?

I'm going to get downvoted to oblivion, but it doesn't change the reality that Python in 2025 is unnecessarily fragile.

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That’s exactly what I have. The C++ codebases I work on build against a specific pinned version of LLVM with many warnings (as errors) enabled, and building with a different version entails a nonzero amount of effort. Ubuntu will happily install several versions of LLVM side by side or compilation can be done in a Docker container with the correct compiler. Similarly, the TypeScript codebases I work with test against specific versions of node.js in CI and the engine field in package.json is specified. The different versions are managed via nvm. Python is the same via uv and pyproject.yaml.

I don't doubt it, but I don't think that situation is accepted as the default in C/C++ development. For the most part, I expect OSS to compile with my own clang.

I agree with your point, but

> if we all had five different llvms or gccs

Oof, those are poor examples. Most compilers using LLVM other than clang do ship with their own LLVM patches, and cross-compiling with GCC does require installing a toolchain for each target.

Cross-compiling is a totally different subject… I'm trying to make an apples-to-apples comparison. If you compile a lot of OSS C projects for the host architecture, you typically do not need multiple LLVMs or GCCs. Usually, the makefile detects various things about the platform and compiler and then fails with an inscrutable error. But that is a separate issue! haha

> Can you imagine if we all had five different llvms or gccs just to compile five different modern C projects?

Yes, because all I have to do is look at the real world.

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