"Is Rust a great fit for this project?" I get this question quite frequently so I think it's time to write down my thoughts if it can avoid you some painful and costly mistakes. Short answer: no. Coming from someone who wrote a successful book about Rust (Black Hat Rust)
So first of all, I had to upgrade something from Python 2.something to 3.something. I forget the specifics of what went wrong, but modern versions of pip just do not handle Python2 gracefully, at least when working with virtual environments. I tried to freeze to get a list of current dependencies, but pip freeze in a virtualenv just ended up writing out the system’s packages, not those in the virtual environment. I get it, Python2 isn’t officially supported any more, but at the same time, why is a language version not supported? Why is it not handled gracefully? This doesn’t happen in other programming languages.
Anyway, as for bumping up through Python 3 versions. I used a framework to do most of the heavy lifting in my project, but I think Python 3.8 or 3.9 introduced some syntax changes which made it not compatible any more. Changing how string literals are handled, and adding/removing arguments to functions. So I had to bump to a new version of the framework. Of course, because this was a webdev project, updating the framework also meant changing my project itself because of the “move quickly and break things” mindset that they have. So yeah, bumping up through versions of my framework until I got to one which was officially supported with the current python version.
I also used a python program to automatically run some scripts on boot. Turns out a while ago they decided that they wanted to redesign how they did everything, so you have to know to use the 1.x branch (which is still being updated) rather than the 2.x branch.
It honestly feels like everyone has a mindset that anything you write in Python and Node will be perpetually updated, and that long term maintenance isn’t a thing that happens. That you should always be using the latest version of anything.
And yes, I know I could probably work around all of this using Anaconda or docker or some other rube goldberg machine of programs. But I can’t be bothered dealing with that nonsense. I just want to keep something I wrote many years ago running.
If I start a new webdev project, I’m just going to use some Rust framework for the backend, and plain JS for the frontend.
So first of all, I had to upgrade something from Python 2.something to 3.something. I forget the specifics of what went wrong, but modern versions of pip just do not handle Python2 gracefully, at least when working with virtual environments. I tried to freeze to get a list of current dependencies, but
pip freezein a virtualenv just ended up writing out the system’s packages, not those in the virtual environment. I get it, Python2 isn’t officially supported any more, but at the same time, why is a language version not supported? Why is it not handled gracefully? This doesn’t happen in other programming languages.Anyway, as for bumping up through Python 3 versions. I used a framework to do most of the heavy lifting in my project, but I think Python 3.8 or 3.9 introduced some syntax changes which made it not compatible any more. Changing how string literals are handled, and adding/removing arguments to functions. So I had to bump to a new version of the framework. Of course, because this was a webdev project, updating the framework also meant changing my project itself because of the “move quickly and break things” mindset that they have. So yeah, bumping up through versions of my framework until I got to one which was officially supported with the current python version.
I also used a python program to automatically run some scripts on boot. Turns out a while ago they decided that they wanted to redesign how they did everything, so you have to know to use the 1.x branch (which is still being updated) rather than the 2.x branch.
It honestly feels like everyone has a mindset that anything you write in Python and Node will be perpetually updated, and that long term maintenance isn’t a thing that happens. That you should always be using the latest version of anything.
And yes, I know I could probably work around all of this using Anaconda or docker or some other rube goldberg machine of programs. But I can’t be bothered dealing with that nonsense. I just want to keep something I wrote many years ago running.
If I start a new webdev project, I’m just going to use some Rust framework for the backend, and plain JS for the frontend.