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0 pointscarlmr7y ago0 comments

They're also fast and small, which while not always a big matter is very satisfying for me.

0 comments

I work in a Python shop. The Docker images we build are nearly 1 GB. I just built a Go service whose image is only 2.5MB. Admittedly it’s much simpler than the Python apps, but even a complex Go app would never reach the size of our Python app for a number of reasons:

1. Python apps require a distro base image while Go can run on scratch

2. Python images ship with the full standard library; not just the bits you import

3. In Python, if you add a dependency only to use 1 function or variable, you still end up with the whole dependency in your Docker image, while I’m pretty sure Go’s linker strips unused code.

carlmrOP7y ago

I agree, I'm not a python fan. Python has a few good libraries I can't find in other languages, but it's slow, bad for multi core utilization, hard to distribute, is very wasteful with how many dependencies need to be included, has a terrible package manager and I prefer static strong typing.

icebraining7y ago

Have you tried mypy? It's a pretty good static typing system for Python - arguably better than Go's.

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icebraining7y ago

While it can't compete with 2.5MB, python:3.6-alpine (which includes points 1 and 2) weighs less than 100MB. You need a lot of Python code to get to 1GB.

weberc27y ago

Fair point. Our largest Python image has only 255 Mb of Python dependencies and ~50 Mb of source code. If we could use alpine (our compliance auditors strongly prefer centos base images), it would only be ~400 Mb. This is easily an order of magnitude bigger than an equivalent Go program, but still quite a lot better.

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carlmrOP7y ago

My favorite Python library is pandas. If I only include this with pyinstaller I already get a >500MB executable.

IMHO unacceptably large, but that's because Python doesn't know which parts of pandas it might need to execute the program.

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j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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weberc27y ago

1. Python apps require a distro base image while Go can run on scratch

2. Python images ship with the full standard library; not just the bits you import

3. In Python, if you add a dependency only to use 1 function or variable, you still end up with the whole dependency in your Docker image, while I’m pretty sure Go’s linker strips unused code.

carlmrOP7y ago

icebraining7y ago

Have you tried mypy? It's a pretty good static typing system for Python - arguably better than Go's.

2 more replies

icebraining7y ago

While it can't compete with 2.5MB, python:3.6-alpine (which includes points 1 and 2) weighs less than 100MB. You need a lot of Python code to get to 1GB.

weberc27y ago

1 more reply

carlmrOP7y ago

My favorite Python library is pandas. If I only include this with pyinstaller I already get a >500MB executable.

IMHO unacceptably large, but that's because Python doesn't know which parts of pandas it might need to execute the program.

2 more replies

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse