It doesn’t force you to use any of the extra functionality. My team has been using it just for the version control part for a couple years and it has worked great.
> I say all of this as someone who has lost a lot of friends to the opioid crisis and has watched Portland's meth problem first hand.
Sorry to hear that. I’ve been fortunate not to have friends or family caught up in it, but we lost a neighbor last year.
I hope you’re right that things will get better.
In the meantime, it feels disingenuous to act like the impact so far has been positive for everyone, or like legalizing and hard-nose crap are the only options. I think it undermines trust and pits different parts of Portland against each other. It’s easy to get a laugh or an eye roll from my neighbors on the north side of town when I pass along some of the ”obvious” solutions my friends and colleagues from the west side have shared with me. Please consider our perspective: even if we double the police force and start addressing crime more promptly, our neighborhood is still worse off because we have more crime. Other parts of the city don’t seem to appreciate that.
I don’t think legalization is better for everyone, though. I live in Oregon and I’ve been very disappointed with the impact of decriminalizing possession. Cases are no longer clogging the courts, instead we have people using in my neighborhood park and on public transit. I stopped taking the train after a ride where we had to evacuate because someone was smoking fentanyl (apparently even the second-hand smoke can affect a person). It was, apparently, not his first time.
You seem to support it, how would you address the externalities?
It’s different when you have people depending on you! Not OP but I’d love to spend a sabbatical with my family… if I could afford it. I’d need a much bigger cushion.
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. ;)
Thanks! That totally makes sense. If I had to pick a pain point for getting people started with Python tools it would be environments. Comments here make me think my team is working with a lot less data too.
I’ll second klelatti’s question about R vs Python. From my perspective Python is just as practical for actuarial calcs and better for building general purpose tools. Is there a reason Anaconda didn’t click?
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?
... that’s a laugh of bitter jealousy. I’ve dealt with XML, but I’ve never with XML that came with a schema, or which would have reliably followed one. Not saying schema-less formats are great, but at least I can eyeball them to see what is going on.
While I understand why authors may not like the IA’s emergency program, I find the language to describe it confusing. A number of comments here use the term “uncontrolled digital lending”, and it took me a bit of reading to discover that the files still had DRM and would “expire“ after a set time. The phrase paints a picture of the IA sending unprotected PDFs to anyone and everyone. I think it is confusing at best.
Authors, I don’t think the confusion does you any favors. I was more sympathetic to your concerns before I read your comments.
I have thought about using DVC at work, but I have held off in part because it isn’t clear to me how the development is supported financially. I recall seeing a job posting (almost put in a resume!), but I don’t see any pricing info, so I’m a bit confused. Am I missing something obvious?
In my experience with auditors, harsh/rigorous does not necessarily mean better because the auditor’s mindset makes an enormous difference. I’ve had process-focused people spend days of their time and mine digging into things that do not have a material impact on results. Unfortunately, even if people have the best intentions, I think that process-focused-but-loose and results-focused-but-rigorous can be easy to mix up, especially for people not in the weeds.
Is there any support that would be helpful? I’ll look at the project page too.