That’s exactly how NPM works, and how Cargo works by default. You can make npm install stuff globally, but that’s not recommended except for things like CLI tooling. Cargo builds every project in its own separate targets/ directory unless you manually configure it to share that dir between builds. In both cases, the default is to isolate your current project from everything else on the system.
The main difference is that Python use to make you have to know that the virtualenv existed. Now `uv run` and `poetry run` abstract that away so you don’t have to interact with it if you don’t want to.
I understand it's meme that operates well outside python - python seems particularly bad due to many packages having system dependencies in addition to package to package dependencies.
I'm just speculating that's it's a self reinforcing pattern - compatibility problems leads to isolated builds, which reduces peoples concern for backwards compatibility, which makes isolated builds ever more important.
Maybe it's fine - a trade off that allows greater velocity of development, it just seems attention to backwards compatibility is becoming a thing of the past.
> The entire browser ecosystem started out closed source.
That is completely, 100%, untrue and not remotely historically accurate. WorldWideWeb (the first web browser) was public domain. Lynx came out in 1992. Mozilla was open sourced in 1998. There was never a time when the "entire" browser ecosystem was closed source. It certainly didn't start that way.
> Even JavaScript was written to interact with closed source Java Applets.
> Netscape decided to add a programming language to Navigator. They pursued two routes to achieve this: collaborating with Sun Microsystems to embed the Java language, while also hiring Brendan Eich to embed the Scheme language.
> The goal was a "language for the masses", "to help nonprogrammers create dynamic, interactive Web sites". Netscape management soon decided that the best option was for Eich to devise a new language, with syntax similar to Java and less like Scheme or other extant scripting languages.
> [...]
> The choice of the JavaScript name has caused confusion, implying that it is directly related to Java. At the time, the dot-com boom had begun and Java was a popular new language, so Eich considered the JavaScript name a marketing ploy by Netscape.
Some people might have used it for the purpose you claim, but that's not why it was invinted.
> Netscape decided to add a programming language to Navigator. They pursued two routes to achieve this:
And the reason for that two language approach is given in the linked source:
> We aimed to provide a “glue language” for the Web designers and part time programmers who were building Web content from components such as images, plugins, and Java applets. We saw Java as the “component language” used by higher-priced programmers, where the glue programmers—the Web page designers—would assemble components and automate their interactions using [a scripting language].
Earlier sources clearly state that Java was intended as the primary language and JavaScript merely acting as glue.
If Flash hadn’t sucked harder than a neutron star, that would be an argument to have. People install lots of proprietary plugins today. Flash would’ve been just one more on that list.
But it did suck, and badly. It crashed the browser all the freaking time, often hard enough to crash the whole OS. (“But the OS shouldn’t let that happen!” True, although even with that said, it was in the short list of common apps capable of crashing that badly. It was almost a talent.)
Flash was horrid. While idea was fine, the implementation was terrible. No mobile OS could have run it solidly and without sucking batteries like no tomorrow. Flash in the right hands could have been nice. We’ll never know because that never happened.
> No mobile OS could have run it solidly and without sucking batteries like no tomorrow.
By the time mobile could run Flash, it was too late. Between Apple & Adobe, it had no shot of making the transition. But before that, Flash was pretty amazing.
It was never amazing. It was adequate to give creative people a way to work around its many shortcomings and make something cool anyway. The tech and the implementation was awful, and all credit goes to people who still managed to shine through it.
For all the many reasons people might dislike Apple, they were 100% in the right on this topic. Flash needed to die. It got everyone to collectively push the web standard technologies ahead into something way, way better.
> The tech and the implementation was awful, and all credit goes to people who still managed to shine through it.
Sorry, that's simply not true. The tech was ahead of its time. The implementation was intuitive. Only developers and Steve Jobs hated it, because Flash made it way too easy for anyone to make something fun.
And yet, there was no html5 newgrounds. The magic of flash was that it gave a space where a music person, an art person, and a programmer could bang something out. The barrier to entry was comically low, which allowed an absolute explosion of content.
Sometimes good products happen despite bad technical foundations.
It was definitely amazing, especially as a creator. It's how I learned to program! Actionscript was my first language. The only thing kinda close to the experience now is Processing. There may have been issues with the tech, but it kickstarted so many creative and engineering professional careers. There were so many good apps and games. It had such a rich ecosystem.
I wonder if they pulled Fable because it had too high of a “dangerous session” count. If so, I wonder if they’ve considered that their “dangerous session” detector has lost its damn mind this week.
(BTW, that screenshot is 100% real. I was walking to work this morning and a random song played. I had a thought about it and wondered what a model would have to say on the matter. I ran that prompt and got that response, said something profane out loud, and screenshotted it to share with friends. That’s not a mockup, but something I personally experienced and recorded myself.)
That’s not quite true. A recipe can specify a URL to check for a new version, and the homebrew automation will periodically check it. If there’s a new version, it automates the version bump.
I used that for a package my company publishes, and neither we nor any other human AFAIK ever manually update it in homebrew, yet the newest version is always installable there.
reply