The Bard in Green

So this is… what I do for work, just now in my leisure time?

There’s a learning curve, but if you’re familiar with WAF’s it’s not hard.

If you want to DIY something, I have a bash script that builds OpenResty with NAXSI from source. Most of the web apps I write anymore are actually in Lua, for OpenResty, maybe with an API written in something else. But I also help other members of my team deploy their Node and Python apps and stuff, and I always just park those behind OpenResty with NAXSI, just doing a standard nginx reverse proxy.

Every computer I own is an autobot. My primary machine is always Optimus Prime, has been since 2008. Other machines get other names generally slightly inspired by their role / nature. Bumblebee and CliffJumper are miniPCs of various persuasions, Preceptor is my “mess around with AI” box, my big server that handles most of my data and network services is Wheeljack, my Macbook is Mirage, my backup server is Powerglide, my TV (which is an old Dell all in One running Linux Mint) is UltraMagnus.

Back in the day I had like five Reddit accounts. I still log into one of them sometimes (no it’s not my main one, that one turned into obscene invitations for u/spez to bugger himself with a hot poker, I’m not exaggerating).

try { useToiletPaper(); }catch(Exception $e){ cussWords($e); rinseHands(); dryHands(); useToiletPaper(); }

Although,

$Shower = new $Shower(); $Shower->washAnus();

may be an acceptable alternative under some circumstances.

does this issue not apply to other programming languages? dependency hell exists outside of python too yk…

This is like I have a swimming pool and a snapping turtle from the local estuary sometimes ends up camped out in it. But YOU have a swimming pool and it’s full of alligators. When I complain that I don’t wanna go in your swimming pool, you’re like “Doesn’t yours ALSO sometimes have dangerous reptiles?” And I’m like…dude…

I’m been a developer for a long time. I know what a normal amount of pain is. This stack causes an ABNORMAL amount of pain, like badly designed exercise equipment a bunch of sycophantic fitness bros keep pumping on social media, even though it regularly causes back injuries.

I think Python devs only think it’s normal because you’re used to it or something.

allso, I’m not using too many modules

Great, but you picked a stack in the middle of a toxic garbage dump. Maybe it’s the clean part of the garbage dump. IDK. I just wish people would stop, because there are so many awesome stacks out there, so I don’t have MORE reasons to have to wade back in here.

And THAT is the origin of the Facebook analogy (the only reason I have to keep using this is because EVERYBODY ELSE IS).

I’m LITERALLY going through Python dependency hell again right this very second, trying to deploy some shit we need for next week and I’m just like I swear to god, this motherfucking broken ass ecosystem

🚀💥

As long as I continue to sometimes waste hours of my life on irresolvable dependency hell, after exactly following the “deploy my project” instructions, trying with multiple environment managers (venv, conda, poetry), watching my system environment somehow get broken even though I’m using some kind of virtual environment (happened to me just last week), I will continue to AGGRESSIVELY have the opinion that

• The only reason we’re all still here is everybody else is.
• The only reason someone would actually voluntarily CHOOSE this tech stack, in 2025, is for comfort zone reasons, they don’t know any better reasons, their boss told them to reasons, or the libraries they need are ONLY here reasons.

Thus the Facebook of programming languages.

And oh yeah, “so use docker.” Dude, if your ecosystem only works reliably in carefully controlled containers, in 2025, the problem is your shitty shitty, stupid, chronically broken ecosystem, not me for being frustrated with it.

This problem IS AND HAS BEEN so bad that every few years someone does a WHOLE NOTHER BIG PROJECT to try to solve it, so now we have multiple buggy ass environment resolvers, non of which work well enough to be considered anything other than an embarrassment to the community, when compared with say the modern Lua or Rust ecosystems.

Like this stack ALL YOU WANT, I not only don’t get it, I’m (I believe justifiably) grumpy and frustrated because when I want to use your shit, now I have to use this crummy stack. Thanks for that Python advocates. I’m so grateful to you for that. Thanks so very very much.

THUS the Facebook of programming languages. Facebook is “fun” and “easy to get started with” too. Lua is JUST AS EASY to get started with, but its’ ecosystem doesn’t do this to me. Explain that, if you can.

I know you’re human beings like me and you deserve compassion, but damn it, I have wasted SO MUCH TIME trying to get your broken, buggy ass shit to work, and I’m VERY frustrated about it. You’re not gonna talk me down.

I don’t care about how easy or fun the syntax is. The syntax is irrelevant to me. I care about how borked up and bloated the ecosystem is, and how so many “here’s how you deploy my project” instructions fail horribly to work due to unexplainable dependency conflicts, and how fragile and unstable and specific and unforgiving the complex web of virtual environments (and their multiple different managers) are just to run some 5,000 line script someone wrote that requires shittylib 2.1.3 and pieceofgarbagemodule 0.5.1, but shittylib 2.1.3 requires abandonedproject 4.1.1 and pieceofgarbagemodule 0.5.1 requires abandonedproject 3.0.99 and “pip failed to resolve dependencies after 15 minutes of installing shit because we didn’t write it to do that, fuck you, hahaha, modify your requirements.txt to use a different version of abandonedproject lol!” That shit is unacceptable in the modern world, given the alternatives available.

I will die on this hill, regardless of hate and downvotes.

Ah Python, the Facebook of programming languages.