Simple graphic library for beginners

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Jan 12, 2018 at 9:00 PM, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12 January 2018 at 09:12, Tim Golden <mail at timgolden.me.uk> wrote:
>> I think the shame here is that there is a learning opportunity on both
>> sides. As Paul says: by and large, the huge amount of work which the Python
>> Packaging team, especially the pip developers, have put in has paid off.
>> It's now usually possible to say: "pip install XXX" and have it work out of
>> the box for any recentish version of Python on any recentish version of a
>> mainstream OS. Once people understand the basics of using that "interface",
>> many things become simple.
>>
>> Unfortunately, where that *doesn't* work, it probably won't be because of
>> low-hanging fruit: it'll be because of some strange interaction of different
>> versions, odd leftover PATH setups, obscure Windows C Runtime redistribution
>> issues, poor encoding interactions between Python and the Windows console,
>> and so on.
>
> Agreed. The other factor, and in my experience one of the most
> frustrating to deal with, is when people *don't* start with "pip
> install XXX", but instead find some complex process on the web, try
> that, have it fail, and then we have to help them untangle whatever
> mess that might have left for them.

This is particularly common on Windows, where the normal way to get
software is "go look on the web, download something, hope it's the
right thing, and give it free reign to install itself on your
computer". On Linux systems, people tend to be a bit more familiar
with the concept of package managers, so they aren't surprised to
learn that Python has one.

(Of course, there is still the big question of "which package manager
ought I to be using", very much an XKCD 927 situation, but at least
that's easier to ask about. "How did you install Python?" "With
apt-get." "Okay, then use apt-get to install the package." "It's not
in apt's repositories." "No problem, pip it is.")

ChrisA