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4dregresstoday at 5:53 AM5 repliesview on HN

I’ve been a python dev for nearly a decade and never once thought dep management was a problem.

If I’ve ever had to run a “script” in any type of deployed ENV it’s always been done in that ENVs python shell .

So I still don’t see what the fuss is about?

I work on a massive python code base and the only benefit I’ve seen from moving to UV is it has sped up dep installation which has had positive impact on local and CI setup times.


Replies

bboygravitytoday at 6:47 AM

How did you tell other people/noobs to run your python code (or how did you run it yourself after 5+ years of not touching older projects)?

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jshentoday at 6:44 AM

Python's dependency management has been terrible until very recently compared to nearly every other mainstream language.

petersellerstoday at 6:36 AM

> it’s always been done in that ENVs python shell .

What if you don't have an environment set up? I'm admittedly not a python expert by any means but that's always been a pain point for me. uvx makes that so much easier.

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rednafitoday at 7:37 AM

I guess this is why people need to get out of this “Python dev” or “JS dev” mindset and try other languages to see why those coming to Python complain so much about dependency management.

People complain because the experience is less confusing in many other languages. Think Go, Rust, or even JS. All the tooling chaos and virtual environment jujitsu are real deterrents for newcomers. And it’s not just beginners complaining about Python tooling. Industry veterans like Armin Ronacher do that all the time.

uv is a great step in the right direction, but the issue is that as long as the basic tooling isn’t built into the language binary, like Go’s tools or Rust’s Cargo, more tools will pop up and fragment the space even further.

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mmcnltoday at 9:31 AM

Virtual environments alone are not enough. They don't guarantee deterministic builds. What do you do to ensure that your production environment runs the same code as your local dev environment? How do you solve that problem without dependency managers like uv or poetry?