Python environments and versioning are a PITA too. That's my main beef with it. Getting anyone else's Python code to run is a nightmare if they haven't documented everything; most other languages I use feel like they have some sort of default versioning built in when you start including other packages.
The difference between 'npm install' (and even an added 'gulp') and the chickens I've had to sacrifice at crossroads to get Python packages working is notable.
It's funny you should say the same issues aren't as bad with Node and NPM. Node's versioning is a sliding window. I tried compiling Bootstrap recently and it simply wouldn't compile because there was some dependency error that didn't make sense. Apparently Node breaks things too frequently and you can't `npm install` anything if it's half a year behind the newest version. I've never had that problem with Python.
'Node breaks things too frequently' - Python 2.7 -> 3.0.
Yes, you need to get the right version of Node, just like you need the right version of Python. I've had both largely just work with directions of "Version Y.X", where Y is defined. I've also had the occasion where it still broke with a specific version where both Y and X were defined.
In general, if I have the right version of Node (and I agree, I'd prefer package.json to also indicate the version of Node that was used to initialize it), things work when installing from package.json. Things also generally just work with Python if I have the right major version of Python, and an environment file. My issue is more that the 'simple' steps a lot of people do when creating Python projects -don't- use an environment. They just use whatever is installed globally on their computer, and they pip install any dependencies, then write a readme to pip install things with, rather than lock it down with a virtual environment.
And if every Python developer, researcher using Python, etc, did that, it would be much less of a problem. The reality is, many, many don't.
It's kind of ironic, really. With the Zen of Python stating "There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it" why is it that it's so common for people to not do the thing that makes it reasonably portable?
I mean, I currently am working with some code that, as part of its readme, has a pip install of a lib -off of master-, and yes, obviously that caused problems. Is the author not a Python developer? Well, he's a researcher. Why is the obvious thing for someone coming naively to develop in the language not building a portable environment?
> Is the author not a Python developer? Well, he's a researcher.
I think this is why the situation is bad in Python: we have too many non-programmers in the community, that simply want something to work and get on with theirs life. If they can get by it by installing a bunch of libraries by running some command incantations as root, they're happy enough.
You don't have this problem with Node because the only niche that Node really matters is Web, and WEB DEVELOPERS know that their environment should be reproducible.
*: Even in Node this isn't really true, since we have yarn vs npm. Ruby is way more stable thanks to bundler.
> we have too many non-programmers in the community, that simply want something to work and get on with theirs life
The impact of those people in the ecosystem is zero, though. They don't inconvenience anyone by producing badly-written libraries, they literally do their job, produce what they want to produce and everyone is happy. I'm not sure why they get lumped in with "this problem".
I don't know why I hear this a lot, it certainly doesn't echo my experience. I've rarely had dependency problems, even the regular requirements.txt (without pinning to specific versions) tends to work well enough on reasonably current code. Pipenv pretty much solves the problem by introducing a lockfile.
The difference between 'npm install' (and even an added 'gulp') and the chickens I've had to sacrifice at crossroads to get Python packages working is notable.
Oblig XKCD - https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/python_environment.png