Python and pip just being there is a huge advantage for newbies. I really think that part of programming is constantly ignored because all the decision-makers are not newbies.
It's honestly terrible for newbies. If they try to use it, there's no pip included. So then they easy_install all their libraries which installs things into different places than most python devs will be used to. Or they easy_install pip first. But even still, everything is installing to system paths, so when they try to install things it fails with permission errors. They find a stack overflow post that says just "sudo" everything and they go to town. And there's no way to reset anything when it gets borked either because it's the system install.
Compare that to "brew install python". Now you have the most up to date version, with the right permissions for your user, that you can always brew uninstall and reinstall later if you need a different version or a clean install.
So you're saying Apple should adopt brew as default package manager and install all system tools using brew? I could get behind that, but just dropping everything without replacement makes it harder for first-time programmers.
you can always brew uninstall and reinstall later if you need a different version
That is the wrong way to do it. Just install pyenv/pipenv to manage different Python versions. It's dead simple to maintain system Python, Python 2.7x, and Python3.7.3 that way.
Yes but I’ve never seen someone new to programming that bothered trying to figure out pyenv or similar. Even a lot of moderately experienced devs don’t bother with it. I guess it’s hard to realize the benefits of keeping environments organized until you’ve been burned by it.
Sure you can do that, but why would you want to install and re-install different versions of Python depending on what you needed at the moment? Pyenv manages all that nicely. You can have 2x and 3x side by side without having to reinstall and uninstall anything.
> You can have 2x and 3x side by side without having to reinstall and uninstall anything.
You can do that anyway, `python` is always Python 2 (except on Arch where `python` is Python 3 and the Python 2 executable is `python2`) and the Python 3 executable is called `python3`. `pyenv` is more for keeping multiple minor versions of the same major version (e.g. Python 3.6 and Python 3.7) around at the same time.
`pyenv` is more for keeping multiple minor versions of the same major version (e.g. Python 3.6 and Python 3.7) around at the same time
Actually, it doesn't have to be multiple minor versions, it can be any version–major or minor. It can even be Iron Python or Jython. Anyway, the point is that it's smart not to touch system Python on macOS. So when I run:
`$ pyenv versions`
My output is:
`system
`2.7.16
`* 3.7.3 (set by /Users/wyclif/.pyenv/version)
Dead simple and easy to use. Much better than overwriting and reinstalling when you need a different version for a specific project.
Homebrew is not perfect though - it doesn't handle multi-versions (e.g. 3.7 and 3.8 running in parallel), which were working fine with Apple's Framework mechanism. Pyenv is superior in that respect (although it's fundamentally a hack). But I agree that brew does a better job for newbies than Apple's system python.
Again the word "serious" is there telling me people are absolutely aloof to the kinds of new developers there are and what it's like to be a non programmer.
What newbie will start with Python 2.7 at this point in time? Most books and tutorials are updated for Python 3. The default Python 2.7 interpreter from macOS is useless for newbies, it does more harm than good by confusing them.
They sure could, but is it worthy to maintain an alternative package and deployment system for which you have no use yourself? Will employees be careful and committed to something useless for their jobs?
They previously deprecated Java runtime for similar reasons. And I can’t really blame them, roadmap is crystal clear now, they prefer to assign ressources to develop Swift/Swift UI and improve tooling for native code development.
I agree overall, but I do think it's a little sad that you can no longer open a Terminal and start writing Python. I think this legitimately matters in terms of increasing overall tech and programming literacy.
Mind, there's still a command line and shell built-in, which I consider far more important.
Its not like the rest of the terminal is friendly to newbies. An online ‘jsfiddle’ like environment suitable for newbies (with a bit of inline syntax hints without turning into a full IDE) would be more useful to get people to start playing with programming
Separately from including python, I've always thought it would be nice if TextEdit had some built-in syntax highlighting, that activated automatically for the right file extensions.
I'm generally against bloating simple apps, but you'd never see this unless you opened a .py file (or .sh, .rb, etc), and if you open a .py file, you probably want syntax highlighting.
Gee, thanks. My point was about discoverability and being able to Google for "read csv with Python", not whether experienced programmers can hack things together.
The young, bored but smart kid in an elementary or middle school tinkering with her computer and finding something to do. She doesn't need a book or a tutorial to tell her the "right" way. She experiments, only guided by her curiosity.
There still Swift Playground, Safari JS console, not to mention old fashioned zsh/bash/ksh to tinker with. The part where the removal of the default macOS Python/Ruby/perl (which don't even have autocompletion) kills her curiosity seems far fetched.
What command-line programming language interpreters are left when those are removed? You have the shell itself, but that’s hardly enough to write anything cool.
This feels the same as when Microsoft removed QBasic from Windows 98. So many kids at home missed opportunities to be exposed to programming from them on, until a certain Terminal application appeared in Mac OS X and began to pique young curiosity again (mine included).
> What command-line programming language interpreters are left when those are removed?
zsh/bash/ksh93, tcsh, awk, sqlite3, elisp (assuming emacs survives for now) and javascript console. I don't know why you'd want to limit things to pre-installed command line interpreters though.
> You have the shell itself, but that’s hardly enough to write anything cool.
What kind of cool things do you envision the curious beginner to write, using only the current preinstalled Python/Ruby/perl, that they can't do with the remaining interpreters that I mentioned?
> What kind of cool things do you envision the curious beginner to write, using only the current preinstalled Python/Ruby/perl, that they can't do with the remaining interpreters that I mentioned?
What about the iconic 4th grader "greetings and cool things" script? Here's something like what it looked like for me (on the IBM PC in my classroom):
5 CLS
7 RANDOMIZE TIMER
10 PRINT "Hello there. I'm a computer. What is your name?"
20 INPUT G$
30 PRINT "Hello "+G$+". You are welcome to computer land."
40 PRINT "What would you like to do today?"
50 PRINT "1) Make noises"
60 PRINT "2) Make a maze"
70 PRINT "3) Exit"
80 PRINT "Enter your selection:"
100 INPUT S$
110 IF S$="1" GOTO 200
120 IF S$="2" GOTO 300
130 IF S$="3" GOTO 400
140 PRINT "Try again."
150 GOTO 40
200 SOUND 20+(RND*20000), RND*3
210 GOTO 200
300 SCREEN 1
310 IF RND>.5 THEN PRINT "/"; ELSE PRINT "\";
320 GOTO 310
400 PRINT "Bye."
That kind of stuff is perfect for Ruby and Python. I don't envision kids getting that far with shell scripts, awk, sqlite3, or elisp. They might with HTML and JavaScript, but that requires learning HTML as well as JS and is sandboxed in the web browser; it's also not as "Cool! Look what I can make the computer do!" as messing around in the terminal. (Note, I’m glad BASIC isn't as available anymore -- we're not getting kids into certain bad programming habits early-on, like use of GOTO. But BASIC would still be more approachable than shell scripting, awk, etc.)
clear
echo "Hello there. I'm a computer. What's your name?"
read G
echo "Hello $G. You are welcome to computer land."
while true
do
echo ""
echo "What would you like to do today?"
echo "1) Say something random"
echo "2) Make a maze"
echo "3) Exit"
echo "Enter your selection"
read S
if [ "$S" = "1" ]; then
say $( head -n $((7*RANDOM)) /usr/share/dict/words | tail -n 1 )
elif [ "$S" = "2" ]; then
for i in {1..3000}; do
if (($RANDOM>16384)); then printf '/'; else printf '\'; fi
done
elif [ "$S" = "3" ]; then
echo "Bye."
exit
else
echo "Try again."
fi
done
This doesn't seem much different than the BASIC example to me. I think only the lack of GOTO in shell scripts makes this look slightly more complicated (requiring either putting all the statements in the if ... elif parts or defining functions).
I honestly don't see how a Python or Ruby version would be much better than a shell version for this. Perhaps you can show by example?
You do have a point - that's not too bad, but to my eyes it's still more arcane than Python and Ruby (spoken as someone who has written less than 30 shell scripts in my life).
I still contend that Ruby and Python are far more accessible than shell scripting, because they are very popular, especially Python, cross-platform, and less arcane.
For my own curiosity I did the simplest Python version I could think of to see how it would compare:
import os
import random
import sys
os.system("clear")
print "Hello there. I'm a computer. What's your name?"
G = raw_input()
print "Hello " + G + ". You are welcome to computer land."
while True:
print ""
print "What would you like to do today?"
print "1) Say something random"
print "2) Make a maze"
print "3) Exit"
print "Enter your selection"
S = raw_input()
if S == "1":
F = open("/usr/share/dict/words").readlines()
W = random.choice(F)
os.system("say {}".format(W))
elif S == "2":
for i in range(1, 3000):
if random.random()>0.5:
sys.stdout.write("/")
else:
sys.stdout.write("\\")
elif S == "3":
print "Bye."
exit()
else:
print "Try again."
It looks like a tossup to me, all 3 versions have their own share of magic that will confuse the beginner. I say this as someone who reads and writes a lot more python than bash daily.
Another of my favorites -- this was fun in middle school (years 6-8) when I had a spare minute or two to sit down at a random computer (maybe in a computer lab).
The effect is rather striking, like someone must have really messed up the computer.
My main gripe with Windows NT was that it would go back to the NT screen saver -- I couldn't get it to stay displaying my program, because there wasn't any true DOS mode.
per the link, macOS won't include any scripting languages by default in the future. So the bored user will be less likely to stumble upon an intresting programming language on their macs.
I don't know if that follows. I think it's likely that Apple will include a new installer upon setup that is essentially a one step 'click to install XCode Developer Tools and the following languages:' then has a list of options including Bash, Python, Ruby, Perl, &c. But all that is conjecture because we don't know what they're going to do yet.
You'd have to be very bored and unmotivated to not install a programming language if you had even the slightest motivation to program (IOW, not a normie consumer). I understand what you're saying, but I just don't see how this would be a huge barrier to entry.
Because they don't know it's a deprecated language.
In fact they probably don't even know what "deprecated" means.
It wasn't that long ago that Python 2.7 was the default on the Raspberry Pi. (That may still be true - I haven't checked recently.)
There's a huge ecosystem of Python 2.7 tutorials, introductions, and sample code out there. Very little of it is prefaced with "Of course you should use Python 3 now."
I bet they know how versions work though, and that 3.7 is higher than 2.7. I just googled ‘Python tutorial’ and only one of the results on the first page was for python 2. The first result was ‘The Python Tutorial — Python 3.7.3 documentation’. If some non-programmer was going to start learning python, they’re most likely going to start with google. I can’t see them digging deeper into the results because they want to learn an older version of the language.
I'm gonna disagree on this one. When you're just starting, the installation process can be nontrivial and the terminal window is scary. Having less friction there makes it easier to start and build some confidence. Once you have some idea of what you're doing, you can realize that you want different versions of the language.
I think this is a better argument for Apple providing a package manager with the operating system so that installing python is as easy as typing "brew install python3". Then it'll be just as easy for newbies to learn less standard languages.
If you have a tough time installing software that has maybe a dozen words or so of instructions in a clear easy-to-read format... you really have no business learning to code until you learn how to use your computer first.
Always ask for python2 or python3. "#!/usr/bin/env python" probably won't ever be able to detect and run both, so no matter what you wanted there will always be systems on which you won't get it.
If you follow a python 3 tutorial when your computer has python 2 installed on it, that's a terribly annoying way of fighting with your tools. I've seen it happen. I'd rather they don't risk it and just start fresh.
Not only pip is not provided, but virtualenv neither.
The alternatuve to the current decision is for apple to assign people to keep updating python and provide previous versions as packages like linux distrib does. But it has never been the way they do business.
Learning how to install and configure development environments is an important skill in general, but I'm not convinced having those skills as a prerequisite for exploring programming as a newbie is at all valuable.
On macOS the best config-free entry to programming is Swift and Swift Playgrounds. Everything else can have config and shell hell for further more advanced learning purposes.
I'm sure that my kids will certainly love to hear that they have to learn Unix in order to learn a build system in order to try out Python. It's all part of the "learning process for newbies."
> learn Unix in order to learn a build system in order to try out Python
I definitely understand that the installation process for things like python can be confusing to non-programmers, but I think this is a bit disingenuous. You don't have to learn a build system to install it; python was the first programming language I ever learned, and I used it years before I ever even had any idea what a build system is.
Good grief. What's wrong with going to www.python.org/downloads/ and clicking the big button at the top that says "Download the latest version for Mac OS X"?
If you can't even download an installer and run it, then yeah, maybe not quite ready for programming either.
Please forgive my snark, but this would be exactly my thought process as a reasonably competent computer user who wanted to learn Python.
Even on Windows you can open the browser console and do
> console.log("hello")
Just for teaching basic prints, variables, loops and functions, terminal bash on macOS/Linux or Javascript console work just as well as Commodore 64 BASIC.
The problem is not that the environment is not available or setup is too difficult. The problem is that there's now way more competition from other shinies readily available (web, apps, games, videos). Even if you boot your home PC straight into a terminal, as soon as the kids find the way to a web browser it's game over. Even on 1980s home micros, if the kids got access to (pirated) games, practically none would volunterily keep on programming BASIC.
When you were 6 years old is a different time from now. You probably did not have an always-on connection. There was probably no such thing as Web 2.0. Computers were more difficult to use. Google did not exist. The Internet was perhaps still taking off...
Installing the version you need when you want to run a script is arguably easier for newbies than all the error messages arising from an out of date implementation originally included with an OS.
it's not like installing python is any more complicated than any other piece of software that needs to be installed. Windows users have had no choice but to do that for decades.
It's not a good thing or a bad thing. I'm saying it's not a thing at all.
If someone decides they want to run a custom ruby or python script the least difficult aspect of that decision is installing the interpreter. For example, I was dealing with someone yesterday who decided they wanted to learn how to write apps for Android. Without even seeing a single line of code (or even knowing which language they would have to learn!!) they had already successfully installed Android Studio and Jetbrains IDEA.
Without coming across as some gatekeeping greybeard, I think anyone who has even a glancing interest in programming would agree if you can't follow a one-line/click installation instruction you may want to find a simpler tool for the task than writing your own code from scratch.
Lots of people on just this thread, who have far more than a glancing interest, have expressed their disagreement with this exact idea.
The hardest part for lots of people in learning to program is getting over the idea that programming is for Special People, or possibly Wizards, who know lots of incantations which are beyond mere mortals. Please stop trying to convince them they're right.
Source: I've taught lots of marketing people, admins, call center techs, etc to program in PowerShell or system Python.
On the contrary, not teaching people how to install the interpreter just perpetuates the idea that it is beyond the ken of mere mortals. And that only "Wizards" should do it.
Installing the interpreter is nothing special. It should be taught as such.
