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Cake day: August 17th, 2023

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  • Yes, they can be written in maintainable ways, I didn’t disagree in my original comment. That doesn’t change that most of the projects I come across to this day are absolutely unmaintainable messes. I’m not talking about Python from 10 years ago, I’m talking about the projects I encounter now.

    The biggest issue is that you have to limit yourself to a mostly non-dynamic subset of Python if you want type checking etc. to work, and you have to write your own type definitions for many dependencies. Most projects don’t do that, they instead lean into the dynamic nature of Python, which makes them unmaintainable after little time.


  • Python is by far one of the worst languages I’ve ever seen in relation to maintainability, second only to Javascript (due to missing types, which are fixed by Typescript).

    Seriously, it’s rare for a Python project with more than 1,000 lines to not turn into an absolute mess thanks to the layers upon layers of meta programming, weird edge cases and so on. There are whole bad patterns I’ve never seen beyond Python codebases.

    Things are improving slowly thanks to type hints and so on, but they are still far from where they need to be. Python is used in even more dynamic ways than JS, so the type system needs to be more expressive than TS. You can’t even define a function that appends two tuples with proper type hints!








  • Well if it were closed source, it would be harder to repackage proprietary apps because you would not know how the snap “root filesystem” translates to $DISTRO root filesystem.

    Only if all the other tools (like Snapcraft) were also made closed-source and obfuscated, but that’s besides the point. What if, for example, Snaps start costing money, and you can’t legally turn them into Flatpaks and distribute them? What if the only legal way to get some software for Linux will be the official Snap repository? This approach will make for a far worse user experience than simply using the already working, already open-source and non-enshittifiable alternative.

    Because some apps are only packaged as snaps so if you want them to be accessible to users, you have to install snapd. Flatpak can still be the default which on non-Canonical distros already is. Which why I don’t even worry about snap becoming the standard.

    And by promoting Snap to the same status as Flatpaks on other distributions, you’re opening the gates for enshittification and a worse user experience tomorrow. Again, why support it as an equal option if we all know the price?