The problem for me: a non-python developer, is that I just don't know what to do, ever, to run an existing script or program.
It seems every project out there uses a different package manager, a different version of python, a different config file to set all of that up.
Most of the time, I just have a random .py file somewhere. Sometimes it's a full project that I can look at and find out what package manager it's using. Sometimes it has instructions, most of the time not. _That's_ the situation I struggle with.
Do I just run ./script.py? python script.py? python3 script.py? python3.12 script.py? When inevitably I miss some dependencies, do I just pip install? python pip install? pipx install?
As a developer I'm sure that you just set it up and forget about it. And once things work, they probably keep working for you. But man, it really reflects negatively upon Python itself for me. I don't hate the language, but I sure hate the experience.
I believe what is missing is a way of distributing apps. You face similar issues if you get the C++ source of a random program - there are quite a few build systems in use! However, the compiled program can often just be zipped and shipped, somehow.
The C/C++ ecosystem is a bit more sane, but requires more expertise to fix. As long as you figure out the build process, usually you can rely on the distro packages. For Node and Rust, people really like to use the latest version and not the LTS one for their software.
Uv solves this (with some new standards). ./script.py will now install the python version, create a venv, and install dependencies (very quickly) if they don’t exist already.
It seems every project out there uses a different package manager, a different version of python, a different config file to set all of that up.
Most of the time, I just have a random .py file somewhere. Sometimes it's a full project that I can look at and find out what package manager it's using. Sometimes it has instructions, most of the time not. _That's_ the situation I struggle with.
Do I just run ./script.py? python script.py? python3 script.py? python3.12 script.py? When inevitably I miss some dependencies, do I just pip install? python pip install? pipx install?
As a developer I'm sure that you just set it up and forget about it. And once things work, they probably keep working for you. But man, it really reflects negatively upon Python itself for me. I don't hate the language, but I sure hate the experience.