Why is installing Python stuff suddenly such a pain in the ass?
February 14th, 2007It suddenly occurred to me today that I really don’t know what the right way to install Python packages is, any more.
This state of affairs drives me inSANE.
I’m just a run of the mill guy who uses Python for lots of stuff. And increasingly, I find that I just don’t bother to figure out how to install things that I might like to try, because I really just don’t feel like taking the time to install yet another installation system.
Maybe I sound like a whiney bastard or something, I don’t know. Maybe there’s something utterly heinous about $ python setup.py install that my little brain just doesn’t get, I dunno.
What I DO know is that I now officially loathe installing Python stuff. That means that I’m installing less Python stuff. Which means that I’m increasingly looking for Ruby stuff.
Which bums me out, because personally I like Python way more than Ruby.
You might appreciate an article I wrote for O’Reilly titled “Why I Stopped Coding, and Why I’d Start Again”. It addresses this very issue. I love Python, but it’s a nightmare to build distributable applications. I would switch back to it in a minute if it were not for this.
Brian McConnell
- Brian McConnell @ 12 March 2007Thanks for the pointer, Brian.
I hear where you’re coming from, and I sympathize. My problem is that I CAN’T stop programming, even if I want to. I’m kindo of obsessed with certain problems, and the only way to investigate them is programming.
And every lanugage sucks in one way or another.
Anyway, if any other readers are interested, I found Brian’s article, here’s a link:
Why I Stopped Coding, and Why I’d Start Again
Thanks for stopping by!
- pat @ 12 March 2007