How I got unstuck with Python

posit::conf(2025) | Julia Silge

Hello!

@juliasilge

@juliasilge.com

@juliasilge@fosstodon.org

juliasilge.com

Ten years ago

Ten years ago

explicit

simple

readable

beautiful

This went VERY badly 😩

1️⃣ Managing Python environments

2️⃣ Choosing an IDE for Python

Managing Python environments

• “Dependency hell”
  • A difference from, say, CRAN
• No default or built-in package manager
  • A difference from, say, cargo or npm

My Python situation was a disaster! 😱

Managing Python environments

• First tool that really caught my attention was pyenv
• I am now all in on uv

uv venv
uv pip install -r requirements.txt

Choosing an IDE for Python

• Python is a general purpose programming language
• Many of the editors and IDEs recommended for Python are NOT a good fit for data science
• What about Jupyter Notebooks?

I struggled to be productive! 😭

Choosing an IDE for Python

• Check out “IDE-ntity Crisis: Choosing the Right Tool for Me” by Isabel Zimmerman from yesterday’s session
• Consider the nature of the work you need to do

Why try again with Python at all?

• Collaboration
• Discovering tools in Python that feel ergonomic and wonderful to me
  • requests
  • pydantic
  • ruff

Want to get unstuck with Python?

• Visit https://positron.posit.co/ for Positron documentation and installers
• Find us on GitHub at https://github.com/posit-dev/positron
• Visit https://docs.astral.sh/uv/ for uv documentation and installers

Thank you!

@juliasilge

@juliasilge.com

@juliasilge@fosstodon.org

juliasilge.com