Re:Ask HN: Machine Learning Engineers, what do you do at work?
by EnergyAmy on Friday June 07, 2024 @03:17PM
(#40611941)
And then you'd have to deal with wrong glibc versions or mysterious segfaults or undefined behavior or the the code assuming the wrong arch or ...
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Re:Ask HN: Machine Learning Engineers, what do you do at work?
by KeplerBoy on Friday June 07, 2024 @03:45PM
(#40612201)
python solves none of those issues. It just adds a myriad of ways those problems can get to you.
All of a sudden you have people with C problems, who have no idea they're even using compiled dependencies.
Re:Ask HN: Machine Learning Engineers, what do you do at work?
by EnergyAmy on Friday June 07, 2024 @04:06PM
(#40612430)
In theory you're right, CPython is written in C and it could segfault or display undefined behavior. In practice, you're quite wrong.
It's not really much of a counterargument to say that Python is good enough that you don't have to care what's under the hood, except when it breaks because C suck so badly.
Re:Ask HN: Machine Learning Engineers, what do you do at work?
by KeplerBoy on Friday June 07, 2024 @04:25PM
(#40612610)
I was specifically talking about python packages using C. You type "pip install" and god knows what's going to happen. It might pull a precompiled wheel, it might just compile and link some C or Fortran code, it might need external dependecies. It might install flawlessly and crash as soon as you try to run it. All bets are off.
I never experienced CPython itself segfault, it's always due to some package.