it’s the sort of tool that is really just fundamental now and should be ubiquitous and promoted and taught and talked about every where there is knowledge work. Even more so as there’s a great open source version of the tool.

Oh I’m with you there! And otherwise totally understandable.

I think for python tooling the choice is Python Vs Rust. C isn’t in the mix either.

That seems fair. Though I recall Mumba making headway (at least in the anaconda / conda space) and it is a C++ project. AFAIU, their underlying internals have now been folded into conda, which would mean a fairly popular, and arguably successful portion of the tooling ecosystem (I tended to reach for conda and recommend the same to many) is reliant on a C++ foundation.

On the whole, I imagine this is a good thing as the biggest issue Conda had was performance when trying to resolve packaging environments and versions.

So, including C++ as part of C (which is probably fair for the purposes of this discussion), I don’t think C is out of the mix either. Should there ever be a push to fold something into core python, using C would probably come back into the picture too.

I think there’s a survivor bias going on here.

Your survivorship bias point on rust makes a lot of sense … there’s certainly some push back against its evangelists and that’s fair (as someone who’s learnt the language a bit). Though I think it’s fair to point out the success stories are “survivorship” stories worth noting.

But it seems we probably come back to whether fundamental tooling should be done in python or a more performant stack. And I think we just disagree here. I want the tooling to “just work” and work well and personally don’t hold nearly as much interest in being able to contribute to it as I do any other python project. If that can be done in python, all the better, but I’m personally not convinced (my experience with conda, while it was a pure python project, is informative for me here)

Personally I think python should have paid more attention to both built-in tooling (again, I think it’s important to point out how much of this is simply Guido’s “I don’t want to do that” that probably wouldn’t be tolerated these days) and built-in options for more performance (by maybe taking pypy and JIT-ing more seriously).

Maybe the GIL-less work and more performant python tricks coming down the line will make your argument more compelling to people like me.

(Thanks very much for the chat BTW, I personally appreciate your perspective as much as I’m arguing with you)

Yep! And likely the lesson to take from it for Python in general. The general utility of a singular foundation that the rest of the ecosystem can be built out from.

Even that it’s compiled is kinda beside the point. There could have been a single Python tool written in Python and bundled with its own Python runtime. But Guido never wanted to do projects and package management and so it’s been left as the one battery definitely not included.

I feel like this is conflating two questions now.

1. Whether to use a non-Python language where appropriate
2. Whether to use rust over C, which is already heavily used and fundamental in the ecosystem (I think we can put cython and Fortran to the side)

I think these questions are mostly independent.

If the chief criterion is accessibility to the Python user base, issue 2 isn’t a problem IMO. One could argue, as does @eraclito@feddit.it in this thread, that in fact rust provides benefits along these lines that C doesn’t. Rust being influenced by Python adds weight to that. Either way though, people like and want to program in rust and have provided marked success so far in the Python ecosystem (as eraclito cites). It’s still a new-ish language, but if the core issue is C v Rust, it’s probably best to address it on those terms.

Fair, but at some point the “dream” breaks down. Python itself is written in C and plenty of packages, some vital, rely on C or Cython (or fortran) and rust now more and more. So why not the tooling that’s used all the time and doing some hard work and often in build/testing cycles?

If Guido had packaging and project management included in the standard library from ages ago, with parts written in C, no one would bat an eye lid whether users could contribute to that part of the system. Instead, they’d celebrate the “batteries included”, “ease of use” and “zen”-like achievements of the language.

Somewhere in Simon’s blog post he links to a blog post by Armin on this point, which is that the aim is to “win”, to make a singular tool that is better than all the others and which becomes the standard that everyone uses so that the language can move on from this era of chaos. With that motive, the ability for everyday users to contribute is no longer a priority.

Cool to see so many peeps on the Fedi!

While I haven’t used uv (been kinda out of Python for a while), and I understand the concerns some have, the Python community getting concerned about good package/project management tooling is certainly a telling “choice” about how much senior Python devs have gotten used to their ecosystem. Somewhat ditto about concern over using a more performant language for fundamental tooling (rather than pursuing the dream of writing everything in Python, which is now surely dead).

So Simon is probably right in saying (in agreement with others):

while the risk of corporate capture for a crucial aspect of the Python packaging and onboarding ecosystem is a legitimate concern, the amount of progress that has been made here in a relatively short time combined with the open license and quality of the underlying code keeps me optimistic that uv will be a net positive for Python overall

Concerns over maintainability should Astral go down may best be served by learning rust and establishing best practices around writing Python tooling in compiled languages to ensure future maintainability and composability.

Oh yea I hear you.

Just recently read your 2017 article on the different parts of the “Free Network”, where it was new to me just how much the Star Trek federation was used and invoked. So definitely interesting to see that here too!

Aesthetically, the fedigram is clearly the most appealing out of all of these. For me at least.

It seems though that using the pentagram may have been a misstep given how controversial it seems to be (easy to forget if you’re not in those sort of spaces). I liked the less pentagram styled versions at the bottom. I wonder if a different geometry could be used?

Cheers! Very much appreciate the love!

Cheers! Actually not sure exactly why you’re saying this (I’ll take the good vibes though) … but if you’re keen to join in in any way you are most welcome!

Cheers for the shout out! Yea the idea of that community is to be a kind of study group.

Whenever I’ve posted a thought or idea, that’s part question part experiment part pondering, I’ve gotten great replies from others.

Also two people have been running twitch streams of running through the book. Sorrybook is nearly done I think (they’ve been going for half a year now which is quite impressive).

The community is at a point now I suspect where some of us have learnt rust well enough to spread out into projects etc, so it’d be nice to work out how we can do that together at all.

Part of my initial idea with the community was to then have a study group for working through the lemmy codebase, treating it as a helpfully relevant learning opportunity … as we’re all using it, we all probably have features we’d like to add, and the devs and users of it are all right here for feedback.

Additionally, an idea I’ve been mulling over, one which I’d be interested in feedback on … is running further “learning rust” sessions where some of us, including those of us who’ve just “learned” it, actually try to help teach it to new comers.

Having a foundation of material such as “The Book” would make a lot of sense. Where “local teachers” could contribute I think is in posting their own thoughts and perspectives on what is important to take away, what additional ideas, structures or broader connections are worth remembering, and even coming up with little exercises that “learners” could go through and then get feedback on from the “teachers”.

I mean, maybe a hot take, maybe not … casual/social voice conversations at a distance were never a good idea in the first place.

Not absolutely at least. A disconnected voice that can summon your attention at any time wherever you are is a weird, uncomfortable, unpleasant and maybe unhealthy thing.

Textual communication at a distance odd much more natural, as it matches the disconnected communication with a more formal and abstract medium.

I know, but Unicode is big. I’m saying that there may very well be something better.

I appreciate the argument, but I feel like there’s too much of a chance that we can do better with something in unicode. Or, that this isn’t really good enough. Three asterisks is just too meh, IMO, to catch on.

⁂ … to me right now just looks like a splodge on the screen.

Somewhat unfortunately, the pentagram in the older icon probably can’t really be used without some cartoon-ification, because reasons.

I claim no expertise here … so take this with plenty of salt. I also don’t know how much of this is specific to the protocol itself or is just the way bluesky have decided to build things.

I see two interesting and nice things here:

• Users and their follows or social graph are portable across the protocol
• The architecture (again, not sure how much of this is a protocol thing) has different levels of centrality or decentralisation for different parts of the system. So you don’t have to pick an instance just to create an account but can instead pick moderation policies and feeds when you want to. The issue is that underlying everything is a big giant server that’s collecting data and spitting it all out as a firehose. There’s only one right now (BlueSky’s) but the code is open and they say that others can start one too (however onerous that would be). The upside is that all the things downstream from the giant server can rely on it and instead make apps, feeds, execute moderation etc … which could be a nicer experience for both devs and users.

In the end, my impression of it is that they’re building more of a framework and ecosystem for others to build social media within. ActivityPub by comparison is much more of a playground of ideas and tools that people can make and host whatever they want with it. So more truly decentralised but also, IMO, puts more weight on the developers and the users to make the ecosystem happen and work well. For instance, we could have more portable user accounts on the fediverse, but we don’t (yet), because that’d have to be built and then implemented by all the platforms.

Once I see another Big Giant Central server running in some sort of sustainable or functioning way, then I personally think it’ll have a lot of promise. Before then, however, a number of developers might get interested in developing in that ecosystem because of how it might allow them to make the thing they’re interested in and not worry about other things.

As for how ATProto and ActivityPub can and should relate to each other in the future … they’re the only two decently sized projects really having a good shot at this decentralised thing (though there a few web3.0 things out there AFAIU, eg farcaster) … and I think they’re better off being “friends” rather than “enemies” for that reason.

If my impression of their differences is accurate, they’ll have different strengths going forward. IMO, ActivityPub will be more of smaller community thing. If all of the neuroscientists want to create a network of forums and blogs, that they’re in control of, around the world that all talk to each other but without being connected to all of the other social media, then the fediverse and its platforms will be the ecosystem to use. If neuroscientists want to talk to the rest of the world but still have ownship and control over their data and maybe their platform or feed or moderation, then AT-Proto will be the place to go. Bridges between the two would complement the flexibility here.

Yea I have. It’s more twitter-like in its vibe. But people seem happy there.

I’m not really a twitter person … so it’s not really my jam. But the AT Proto as an idea interests me and I’m interested to see what happens on it. Big question for is still whether a second (or third etc) relay will every be run.

“Tiny knowledge projects”: https://observablehq.com/@jsomers/we-need-more-tiny-knowledge-projects-heres-one

Something like a decentralised dynamic web page like the one linked would be cool. But generally, stuff that’s more like “web gardens” where people can build “places” rather than feeds. Wikis being the best known successful example but still somewhat simple (in a good way).

The default web app has a feature for this. When you’re writing a post, as you type the title, it automatically does some sort of search in the community you’re posting to for the title you’ve entered. So if you write “avatar” as the first word in the title field, it will search the community for posts with “avatar” in the title. Don’t know how many other apps or front ends do the same, but it is actually a helpful feature for exactly this.

Yea I’m still a mod there.

I think it’d be jumping the gun right now, unless there’s more context I don’t know about. But maybe after an attempt to have a conversation with the current mod? Though of course meta posts being removed prevents that!