Also, tons of CAE platforms have Python bindings, so you are "forced" to work on Python. Sometimes the solution is not just "abandoning a language".
If it fits your purpose, knock yourself out, for others that may be reading: uv is great for Python dependency management on development, I still have to test it for deployment :)
Lack of types, lack of static analysis, lack of ... well, lack of everything Python doesn't provide and fights users on costs too much developer time. It is a net negative to continue pouring time and money into anything Python-based.
The sole exclusion I've seen to my social circle is those working at companies that don't directly do ML, but provide drivers/hardware/supporting software to ML people in academia, and have to try to fix their cursed shit for them.
Also, fwiw, there is no reason why Triton is Python. I dislike Triton for a lot of reasons, but its just a matmul kernel DSL, there is nothing inherent in it that has to be, or benefits from, being Python.... it takes DSL in, outputs shader text out, then has the vendor's API run it (ie, CUDA, ROCm, etc). It, too, would benefit from becoming Rust.
I'd say Go is a better alternative if you want to replace python scripting. Less friction and much faster compilation times than Rust.
If something doesn't work or I'm still encountering any kind of error with uv, LLMs have gotten good enough that I can just copy / paste the error and I'm very likely to zero-in on a working solution after a few iterations.
Sometimes it's a bit confusing figuring out how to run open source AI-related python projects, but the combination of uv and iterating on any errors with an LLM has so far been able to resolve all the issues I've experienced.
It is great for learning on how to program (BASIC replacement), OS scripting tasks as Perl replacement, and embedded scripting in GUI applications.
Additionally understand PYTHONPATH, and don't mess with anything else.
All the other stuff that is supposed to fix Python issues, I never bothered with them.
Thankfully, other languages are starting to also have bindings to the same C and C++ compute libraries.
I wish this were broadly true.
But there's too much legacy Python sunk cost for most people though. Just so much inertia behind Python for people to abandon it and try to rebuild an extensive history of ML tooling.
I think ML will fade away from Python eventually but right now it's still everywhere.
There are libraries to write SIMD in Go now, but I think the better fix is being able to autovectorize during the LLVM IR optimization stage, so its available with multiple languages.
I think LLVM has it now, its just not super great yet.
So I guess what I'm wondering is, are you a python guy, or are you more like me? because for basically any of these tools, python people tell me "tool X solved all my problems" and people from my own cohort tell me "it doesn't really solve anything, it's still a mess".
If you are one of us, then I'm really listening.
To say most ML people are using Rust and C couldn’t be further from the truth
Python dependencies are still janky, but uv is a significant improvement over existing tools in both performance and ergonomics.
I'm about the highest tier of package manager nerd you'll find out there, but despite all that, I've been struggling to create/run/manage venvs out there for ages. Always afraid of installing a pip package or some piece of python-based software (that might muck up Python versions).
I've been semi-friendly with Poetry already, but mostly because it was the best thing around at the time, and a step in the right direction.
uv has truely been a game changer. Try it out!
the disease is the cargo cult addiction (which Rust is full of) to micro libraries, not the language that carries 90% of all peer reviewed papers, datasets, and models published in the last decade
every major breakthrough, from AlphaFold to Stable Diffusion, ships with a Python reference implementation because that is the language researchers can read, reproduce, and extend, remove Python and you erase the accumulated, executable knowledge of an entire discipline overnight, enforcing Rust would sabotage the field more than anything
on the topic of uv, it will do more harm than good by enabling and empowering cargo cults on a systemic level
the solution has always been education, teaching juniors to value simplicity, portability and maintainability