Python too complex ?!?!?!

[John J. Lee]

"Chris Mellon" <arkanes at gmail.com> writes:

> On Nov 20, 2007 2:43 PM, John J. Lee <jjl at pobox.com> wrote:
>> "Chris Mellon" <arkanes at gmail.com> writes:
>> [...]
>> > These modules exist, but aren't that common. Certainly anything you're
>> > likely to be using in an introductory compsci course is well packaged.
>> > And even if it's not, it's really not that hard to create packages or
>> > installers - a days work of course prep would take care of the
>> > potential problem.
>>
>> "A day's worth of course prep" for beginners would let them debug all
>> the crap that building MySQLdb on Windows might throw at them, for
>> example?  I think not! (MySQLdb, last time I looked, was one of the
>> not-so-obscure modules that don't have a Windows installer available
>> and kept up to date.  Maybe it does now, but that's not really the
>> point.)
>>
>
> A days worth of course prep would allow the professor (or his TA, more
> likely) to produce a set of installers that's suitable for use with
> the course. This is a comp sci course, not a "how to sysadmin a Python
> installation" course.

Ah, sorry, misread what you wrote.  I made the same point in my next
paragraph, so perhaps the misunderstanding's mutual :-)


> For the record, it took me less than 3 minutes to install MySqldb, the
> first time I've ever needed to do it - I don't like or approve of
> MySql. Steps required: Google for "mysql python" and click through 3
> or 4 links to the SF download page. Download the binary installer,
> from March 2007. Not exactly rocket science.

That's great, though I don't see the connection with what I wrote.

Within the last year or so (IIRC) a MySQLdb Windows installer was not
available.  And ISTR grumpy noises coming from the corner of the
ReportLab office where AFAIK the only Windows binary publically
available shortly thereafter was built -- albeit an unofficial,
unsupported binary.  So I guess the fact that the MySQLdb maintainer
wasn't (isn't?) a Windows user didn't make the build process silky-
smooth ;-)

My point was that it's by no means unheard of for popular Python
modules to be unavailable as Windows binary installers.


> On a similar note, I have or create executable installers for all the
> third party modules I use, because I need to provide them to the
> people who do our deployments. This has never been much of a burden.
[...]

That's nice too.  Other people have not found it so easy.  OTOH, ISTR
that current MinGW / MSYS / Python / distutils make it easier for
people who don't have the appropriate MS compiler, so perhaps the
situation has improved over the last 12 months...


John