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Python has had async for 10 years – why isn't it more popular?

(tonybaloney.github.io)
320 points willm | 2 comments | 02 Sep 25 17:24 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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dekhn ◴[02 Sep 25 17:55 UTC] No.45106670[source]▶
It added intrusive- codebase-wide- functionality that more or less could have been done with other (thread-based) approaches.

AWSCLI was broken for over a year- we had to do a ton of work to deal with the various packaging issues.

Don't break userspace.

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AtlasBarfed ◴[02 Sep 25 21:21 UTC] No.45109218[source]▶
Why was awscli written in python? Bad decision to begin with.

Hey! We have a product that we clearly want to release worldwide. Let's build it on something that doesn't have Unicode. Or any real threading. And is slow as hell.

You picked a platform that was going to have to break user space.

At least it wasn't JavaScript

replies(3): >>45110182 #>>45111808 #>>45111873 #
1. fzzzy ◴[02 Sep 25 22:55 UTC] No.45110182[source]▶
Doesn’t have Unicode? What the heck?
replies(1): >>45111861 #
2. mdaniel ◴[03 Sep 25 03:04 UTC] No.45111861[source]▶
I believe they're discussing that awscli was targeting Python 2.x for the longest time, e.g. https://github.com/aws/aws-cli/blob/0.4.1/setup.py#L48 up through https://github.com/aws/aws-cli/blob/1.19.112/setup.py#L64 from 4 years ago, seemingly cutting over to Py3-only starting with https://github.com/aws/aws-cli/blob/1.20.0/setup.py#L62

I didn't go digging into it, but I'd guess they used the ubiquitous "six" library for backporting unicode functionality, but the point is likely "but why start underwater?!"