Maybe we should separate the evolution of languages from the evolution of package/versioning systems. They do tend to go hand in hand, but that has more to do with logistics and organizational issues than any technical necessity.
But like R has a great packaing system, and it copied Perl, which is much older than Python. Meanwhile Python has a bunch of incompatible packaging systems which cause so much pain to so many programmers.
Did you know that pip won't even resolve dependencies, and will break your programs silently? I certainly didn't, because Python wasn't my first language and therefore I assumed that the package manager will handle dependencies.
Like seriously, when a language designed by statisticians for statisticians (R) has a better packaging story than everyone's second favourite language, something has gone horribly wrong.
> R has a great packaing system, and it copied Perl
I almost used Perl as an example of Python's inverse - a crappy language wrapped in a good packaging system. For its time CPAN was pretty great. All of the things today that people are likely to hold up as being better drew inspiration from it.
> which is much older than Python
Perl 1987, Python 1989. So yes it's older, but much older?
Fair, I realised that the difference wasn't that large after I posted.
I'm just so annoyed by Python's (lack of a) packaging system that it makes me prone to hyperbole. It's been frustrating me at work all week, and I suspect that it will be a low-grade annoyance for me in my career for the next few years, as I'm a Data Scientist and hence need to deal with Python a lot.
