#!/usr/bin/env python vs. #!/usr/bin/python

[D'Arcy J.M. Cain]

On Sat, 03 May 2008 00:43:02 +1000
Ben Finney <bignose+hates-spam at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> writes:
> > Have you ever shipped software to a customer?
> 
> Yes, and all parties have been quite happy with the results.

When some of us talk about shipping software we aren't talking about a
20 line script delivered to our uncle's construction company office.  We
are talking about millions of lines of code in thousands of programs and
modules that has to run out of the box on whatever system the client
happens to run on.

> > Customer: "I can't install it there because <insert whatever silly
> > reason the customer has>. If you can't make your product work
> > without requiring me to install python in /usr/bin, I'm afraid I
> > can't buy your product".
> 
> At this point they have the simple option of running the program with
> 'python /path/to/the/program'. It's certainly not a case of "can't
> make the product work".

Simple for your 20 line single script.  Not so simple for my million
line, integrated system that has to work everywhere.

> It is, however, a case of "can't automatically account for every local
> customisation sysadmins choose to make on their systems". Perfectly
> willing to work with them to get their specific environment working,
> but as a matter of simple economics it's not worth my time to attempt
> to make such corner cases work automatically.

If by "corner case" you mean "some system that I don't personally run"
then OK but to some of us your system is the corner case and we would
like our code to run there as well.

Real software has to deal with the fact that support costs money.
You may be able to deal with one or two clients that way but that does
not scale very well.

> If they've already chosen to install Python to some unpredictable
> location, they know what they're doing enough to invoke the program in
> a specific way to get it working.

Unpredictable to you.  Perfectly predictable on their system.

I do believe I am done with this thread.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at druid.net>         |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.