Top all-time · #2696
Chris Warrick
Personal blog · chriswarrick.com · on HN as Kwpolskaprogramming
Chris Warrick's personal blog at chriswarrick.com covers programming. Since 2018, 19 different Hacker News readers have linked it 40 times, most often “Pipenv: promises a lot, delivers very little”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-05-06, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- Pipenv: promises a lot, delivers very little6 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2018-07-25
- How to improve Python packaging, or why 14 tools are at least 12 too many4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-01-15
- Python Packaging, One Year Later: A Look Back at 2023 in Python Packaging3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-01-15
What Hacker News says?
Regarding not being able to work outside the project root[0]: This is actually one of the things that I love about pipenv! Anaconda, for instance, has environments that are not tied to a directory and are referred to by name (rather than by a directory path) and I've found this to be an absolute nightmare and extremely cumbersome! Not everyone has 10 projects that can share the same environment. (Besides, I would ar…
Comment linking /blog/2018/07/17/pipenv-promises-a-lot-delivers-very-little/
on “Guido van Rossum joins Microsoft”Submitted Pipenv: promises a lot, delivers very little as a story · 272 points
HN discussionhttps://chriswarrick.com/blog/2018/07/17/pipenv-promises-a-l...
Comment linking /blog/2018/07/17/pipenv-promises-a-lot-delivers-very-little/
on “Guido van Rossum joins Microsoft”Submitted Python Packaging, One Year Later: A Look Back at 2023 in Python Packaging as a story · 75 points
HN discussionA recurring theme I've seen in Python packaging community discussion is that a lot of people really seem to hate venvs, mostly for reasons I consider quite irrational. And if they don't outright hate the things, they fear having to try to explain them to newbies. Keep in mind: there are huge numbers of people out there who will cargo-cult about how applying the sudo hammer to Pip fixed something or other (generally,…
Comment linking /blog/2018/09/04/python-virtual-environments/
on “A year of uv: pros, cons, and should you migrate”Submitted Pipenv: Promises a Lot, Delivers Little (2020) as a story · 65 points
HN discussionOn modern Linux you can type `python` at the command prompt and get a REPL. On Windows you download an installer from the official website (just like one usually does to install anything on Windows), then use `py` at the command prompt. You don't need to `import` anything to start teaching Python. Even then you can do quite a lot with the standard library. Even then, unless you're using 3.11 or later on Linux you ca…
Comment linking /blog/2018/09/04/python-virtual-environments
on “Python’s new t-strings”Submitted Python Packaging, One Year Later: A Look Back at 2023 in Python Packaging as a story · 56 points
HN discussionIf you use uv you are using virtual environments . You're merely being shielded from a few minutes worth of education about how they work ( https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2018/09/04/python-virtual-envi... ).
Comment linking /blog/2018/09/04/python-virtual-environments/
on “I'm switching to Python and actually liking it”Submitted PowerShell: The object-oriented shell you didn't know you needed as a story · 49 points
HN discussionI agree that the built-in Python is typically not suitable for development, especially if you're planning to distribute your code and/or care about the versions of its dependencies. (And especially on Debian and its derivatives, in my experience; they even remove parts of the standard library , like Tkinter [0].) I disagree that virtual environments represent an "abyss". It takes very little effort to learn how they…
Comment linking /blog/2018/09/04/python-virtual-environments/
on “I'm switching to Python and actually liking it”Submitted Pipenv: Promises a lot, delivers little (2018, updated 2020) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionPipenv is certainly not "officially recommended", and it should be avoided at all costs: https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2018/07/17/pipenv-promises-a-l...
Comment linking /blog/2018/07/17/pipenv-promises-a-lot-delivers-very-little/
on “Mise: Dev tools, env vars, task runner”Submitted How to improve Python packaging, or why 14 tools are at least 12 too many as a story · 1 points
HN discussion> The python packaging team was officially recommending it NO! This is a common misconception[1]. Edit: Correction it's not endorsed by the core Python team but it's recommended by the Python Packaging Authority in various places. See replies below for more info. [1] https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2018/07/17/pipenv-promises-a-l...
Comment linking /blog/2018/07/17/pipenv-promises-a-lot-delivers-very-little/
on “If this project is dead, just tell us”These kinds of histrionics are really uncalled for. Virtual environments are easy to work with. https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2018/09/04/python-virtual-envi... is a solid tutorial.
Comment linking /blog/2018/09/04/python-virtual-environments/
on “A few things to know before stealing my 914 (2022)”https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2018/07/17/pipenv-promises-a-l...
Comment linking /blog/2018/07/17/pipenv-promises-a-lot-delivers-very-little/
on “I'm not collaborating with Kenneth Reitz”<datalist> might sound like a good idea, but it tends to be inconsistent between browsers [1]. It also doesn’t work on Firefox on Android (both Focus and standard). It was also broken in web views on Android for 1.5 years [2]. [1]: https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2020/02/09/when-html-is-not-en... (disclaimer: my blog post, from 2 years ago, although most of the issues apply today) [2]: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chro…
Comment linking /blog/2020/02/09/when-html-is-not-enough-a-tale-of-the-datalist-element/
on “Cool HTML elements nobody uses”> the deadsnakes ppa Please don't use this. You need to be careful about how you place any secondary installation of Python on Ubuntu. Meanwhile, it's easy to build from source on Ubuntu and you can easily control its destination this way (by setting a prefix when you ./configure, and using make altinstall) and keep it out of Apt's way. > and venvs, plus the ongoing awkwardness about whether pip should be writing st…
Comment linking /blog/2018/09/04/python-virtual-environments/
on “Uv overtakes pip in CI”Here's some sources. This bug in 2017 is characteristic "Pipenv Halloween easter egg" [0]. Pipenv has caused lots of unneeded drama in the Python community[1] - just search for past Pipenv posts. Most of the criticism comes from software developers, and I suspect Pipenv fans are hobbyists (like fuck me for choosing Python in production, right?) I doubt Go's tooling accepts this strange behavior from the maintainers[…
Comment linking /blog/2018/07/17/pipenv-promises-a-lot-delivers-very-little/
on “Responder: A familiar HTTP Service Framework”Interesting reading, I share some of the points in the post, however, one more dependency manager? Mostly I've used plain `python -m venv venv` and it always worked well. A downside - you need to add a few bash scripts to automate typical workflow for your teammates. Pipenv sounds great but there are some pitfalls as well. I've been going through this post recently and got a bit upset about Pipenv: https://chriswarr…
Comment linking /blog/2018/07/17/pipenv-promises-a-lot-delivers-very-little/
on “Freezing Python’s Dependency Hell”How vintage is vintage? Internet Recovery was added in 2011 [0] — although it doesn’t work in all cases. If you have older hardware (as old as 2007), you can download Yosemite, El Capitan or Sierra from Apple’s website [1] or the App Store. Note that using those images requires access to a working Mac, or at least a Mac with working (Internet) Recovery, although doing it in Recovery is complicated and requires some…
Comment linking /blog/2020/06/03/reinstalling-macos-what-to-try-when-all-else-fails/
on “macOS Big Sur Update Bricking Some Older MacBook Pro Models”> The PyPA should shut down or merge some duplicate projects, and work with the community (including maintainers of non-PyPA projects) to build One True Packaging Tool. To make things easier. To avoid writing code that does largely the same thing 5 times. To make sure thousands of projects don’t depend on tools with a bus factor of 1 or 2. -- https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2024/01/15/python-packaging-on...
Comment linking /blog/2024/01/15/python-packaging-one-year-later/
on “Rye: A Vision Continued”I included it because the author did, and irked me by openly admitting they recognize the argument but went against it anyway. There is good reason that particular XKCD hits so hard. Chris Warrick has done a ton of thinking - and a lot of writing [1] - on the subject and has very sage things to say about it. But unlike the author, he didn't decide to write another one. Because there are many good reasons not to. Tha…
Comment linking /blog/2024/01/15/python-packaging-one-year-later/
on “Rye: A Vision Continued”This is an impressive effort, no doubt. And Python packaging is in a woeful state. But I'm sorry, the last thing the ecosystem needs it another alternative! https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2023/01/15/how-to-improve-pyth... https://xkcd.com/927/
Comment linking /blog/2023/01/15/how-to-improve-python-packaging/
on “Rye: A Vision Continued”"I haven’t tried it, but I consider Conda/Anaconda unnecessary for most use-cases. Most stuff that used to be difficult to compile/install should now be available as PyPI wheels for multiple platforms." https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2018/07/17/pipenv-promises-a-l... That is the author of that blog post, replying to a comment there.
Comment linking /blog/2018/07/17/pipenv-promises-a-lot-delivers-very-little/
on “Distributions vs. Releases: Why Python Packaging Is Hard”Here is but one discussion out of the numerous discussions refuting pipenv, - https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2018/07/17/pipenv-promises-a-l...
Comment linking /blog/2018/07/17/pipenv-promises-a-lot-delivers-very-little/
on “Distributions vs. Releases: Why Python Packaging Is Hard”> There's nothing wrong with CSV as it is for basic data transfer. I disagree. CSV is horribly underspecified and many parsers have conflicting ideas on how things should work. I've hit areas where, for example, an API was generating a CSV that another API could read, but NOT if it was opened and then re-saved by Excel first (just re-saving, not editing), because Excel was making some trivial change in the format th…
Comment linking /blog/2017/04/07/csv-is-not-a-standard/
on “CSV 1.1 – CSV Evolved (for Humans)”There's also scikit-build ( https://scikit-build.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ ), a wrapper around CMake, like how meson-python is a wrapper around meson, and enscons ( https://github.com/dholth/enscons , which is by the original wheel creator), which is a wrapper around SCons (I'm not sure how much maintenance it gets though). It's interesting that the original post ( https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2023/01/15/how-to-imp…
Comment linking /blog/2023/01/15/how-to-improve-python-packaging/
on “Python Packaging, One Year Later: A Look Back at 2023 in Python Packaging”> What are we using now? > > Pip? Of course, for standard package installation. > Pyenv? Yes, if you need multiple Python versions available on the same system. > Pipenv? God no. https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2018/07/17/pipenv-promises-a-l... > Poetry? Hatch? Yes, for local environment management and library dependency configuration. > Conda? Not really, unless you're doing data science and are heavily invested in t…
Comment linking /blog/2018/07/17/pipenv-promises-a-lot-delivers-very-little/
on “Freezing Requirements with Pip-Tools”
