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Comment by stochastastic | Hacker News Reader

Hey fellow reinsurance actuary! I totally agree that Excel has its place in modeling, especially one-offs, and your criticisms make sense. That said, we have been moving a lot of our calculations to Python. We have had way too many rickety tools to move files or send emails (“first you open this spreadsheet and click this button, then you open this spreadsheet and click this button, then...”), and way too many version control issues over the years. Python solves those nicely.

I’m curious about docker + pip, why do you like that better than poetry or pipenv?

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One reason why Python is so successful is that it places very nicely with C code. Many of Python's libraries are thin wrappers around native DLLs.

For example, numpy is a wrapper around a BLAS DLL (e.g. Intel MKL). Pipenv manages the python side of things, but don't exert control over the system DLLs (like Docker does). Anaconda gets very close to what Docker does (by managing DLLs). Have not used poetry, so can't comment.

Ultimately, like most dependency management issues, lacking a stable DLL environment won't be a problem until it is :)

numpy is much more than a wrapper around a BLAS dll. BLAS implements three sets of operations: Level 1: unary and binary vector vector operations, one transform. Level 2: Matrix vector operations. Level 3: Matrix matrix operations (most famously the dgemm routine).

Perhaps some blas implementations offer more features, but that would defeat the purpose of a standard interface.

Okay, I can totally see it now. We are still at the stage where people seem to think that I’m neurotic for worrying about the python side of things, so DLLs have not been on the radar. ;)

In Nodejs native libraries are a PITA. The compatibility API breaks on a schedule every 6 month, dependencies get updated by OS distros sometimes breaking stuff, then you rely on the OS being able to compile the library. I hope Python has better native interop.

Much like the referenced Excel spreadsheets becoming unwieldy, so does a dev's machine [0].

0. https://xkcd.com/1987/

It would be considered incredibly bad practice for such a dev's machine to be used to perform almost any calculation of significant business importance. It's why mediocre Tech Executives are able to appear like they got some work done by focusing on "no access from dev to production."

With Excel there is no such separation, and when there is it would make a great punchline to an XKCD or Dilbert cartoon.

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