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> It’s pretty clear if you check github that Azure’s services and documentation are written by distributed teams with little coordination. I've come to the sam

> It’s pretty clear if you check github that Azure’s services and documentation are written by distributed teams with little coordination. I've come to the same conclusion after dealing (and reporting) jankyness in both the Azure (ARM) API and especially the CLI. [0] is a nice issue I look at every once in a while. I think an installed az cli is now 700 MB+ of Python code and different bundled python versions... [0]: https://github.com/Azure/azure-cli/issues/7387 https://github.com/Azure/azure-cli/issues/7387

CamouflagedKiwi 1y ago
Why do all these use Python? AWS, GCP, Azure, all three CLIs use Python; they're slow, bloated, heavy to install... what advantage does Python really offer here? You can't in any sensible way rely on it being installed (in your linked issue we see that they actually bundle it) so it's not even an 'easy' runtime.
- ptx 1y ago
  Python takes up less than 16 MB on disk (python3.11-minimal + libpython3.11-stdlib on Debian) so whatever Microsoft did to make their Azure CLI package take up almost 700 MB, I don't think the language is the problem.
  - c45y 1y ago
    They bundle versioned API schemas....looooots of them. It would be a garbage fire in any language
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - CamouflagedKiwi 1y ago
    It might well be part of the problem. Certainly any language can be inefficient, especially in terms of size, if you don't pay attention (have certainly found this with Go recently). But as I said it's also slow (interpreting code, or dealing with cached versions of it) and it's not obvious to me why all three major cloud CLIs have chosen it over alternatives.
- jlarocco 1y ago
  I don't understand the Python hate. What would they use instead? Python is installed on most systems and easy to install when it's not. Only Azure is dumb enough to bundle it, and that was a complaint in the bug - there's no good reason to do so in this day and age. The performance bottle neck in all three is usually the network communication - have you seen cases where the Python CLI app itself was using 100% of a CPU and slowing things down? I personally haven't. Looking at the crazy way Azure packaged their CLI, it's hard to believe they weren't making it bloated on purpose.
  - motorest 1y ago
    > Python is installed on most systems (...) Not on Windows. And which Python are you talking about? I mean, Python3 is forward compatible but you SoL if you have the bad luck of having an older interpreter installed and you want to run a script which uses a new construct.
    - jlarocco 1y ago
      I don't understand why Windows people are completely okay having to install all kinds of crazy service packs and Visual C++ runtimes anytime they install anything, but then having to install Python seperately makes it a no-go.
  - moi2388 1y ago
    A type safe and memory safe language, like rust? Or their own c# perhaps?
    - jlarocco 1y ago
      Python is a memory and typesafe language. Also, AWS is 10 years older than Rust, and C# only runs on Windows (at least it certainly only did when AWS was created, and is laughably more difficult to get running on Linux or OSX than Python).
      - mdaniel 1y ago
gwynforthewyn 1y ago
It’s legitimately fun to see people gaining hope something would happen about this and then losing hope, again and again. Thanks for the laugh. This is how you can tell that people doing systems work aren’t running the sdk project. A gig dependency for a few python scripts is hard to swallow.

CamouflagedKiwi 1y ago

Why do all these use Python? AWS, GCP, Azure, all three CLIs use Python; they're slow, bloated, heavy to install... what advantage does Python really offer here? You can't in any sensible way rely on it being installed (in your linked issue we see that they actually bundle it) so it's not even an 'easy' runtime.

ptx 1y ago
Python takes up less than 16 MB on disk (python3.11-minimal + libpython3.11-stdlib on Debian) so whatever Microsoft did to make their Azure CLI package take up almost 700 MB, I don't think the language is the problem.
- c45y 1y ago
  They bundle versioned API schemas....looooots of them. It would be a garbage fire in any language
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- CamouflagedKiwi 1y ago
  It might well be part of the problem. Certainly any language can be inefficient, especially in terms of size, if you don't pay attention (have certainly found this with Go recently). But as I said it's also slow (interpreting code, or dealing with cached versions of it) and it's not obvious to me why all three major cloud CLIs have chosen it over alternatives.
jlarocco 1y ago
I don't understand the Python hate. What would they use instead? Python is installed on most systems and easy to install when it's not. Only Azure is dumb enough to bundle it, and that was a complaint in the bug - there's no good reason to do so in this day and age. The performance bottle neck in all three is usually the network communication - have you seen cases where the Python CLI app itself was using 100% of a CPU and slowing things down? I personally haven't. Looking at the crazy way Azure packaged their CLI, it's hard to believe they weren't making it bloated on purpose.
- motorest 1y ago
  > Python is installed on most systems (...) Not on Windows. And which Python are you talking about? I mean, Python3 is forward compatible but you SoL if you have the bad luck of having an older interpreter installed and you want to run a script which uses a new construct.
  - jlarocco 1y ago
    I don't understand why Windows people are completely okay having to install all kinds of crazy service packs and Visual C++ runtimes anytime they install anything, but then having to install Python seperately makes it a no-go.
- moi2388 1y ago
  A type safe and memory safe language, like rust? Or their own c# perhaps?
  - jlarocco 1y ago
    Python is a memory and typesafe language. Also, AWS is 10 years older than Rust, and C# only runs on Windows (at least it certainly only did when AWS was created, and is laughably more difficult to get running on Linux or OSX than Python).
    - mdaniel 1y ago

gwynforthewyn 1y ago

It’s legitimately fun to see people gaining hope something would happen about this and then losing hope, again and again. Thanks for the laugh. This is how you can tell that people doing systems work aren’t running the sdk project. A gig dependency for a few python scripts is hard to swallow.