[python-uk] Python services within existing .Net infrastructure

[Steve Holden]

Hi Jonathan,

Congrats on the new role.

One thing I'd observe is that in my (outdated and limited) experience,
writing a windows service is much harder than writing a Linux daemon if it
has to acknowledge and interact with the desktop environment - see
https://lostechies.com/keithdahlby/2011/08/13/allowing-a-windows-service-to-interact-with-desktop-without-localsystem/,
for example. If things are easier nowadays, or if the service doesn't need
active management, I guess that won't count.

Back in the noughties I was a Windows user, and would frequently remind
people that Windows was an adequate platform on which to run open source
software. But I haven't used it now for about seven years.

Your point about the complexity of heterogeneous environments is a good
one. You might care to investigate the recent addition to Windows of bash
and friends, but of course if you asked the Windows devs to use it they
would in effect be migrating (a portion of) their skills to Linux. Some
will like the challenge, others will resent it.

I'm not sure I really understand the questions behind your final two bullet
points, so I will defer to those more perspicacious than I.

regards
 Steve

Steve Holden

On Tue, Jan 31, 2017 at 3:52 PM, Tom Wright <tom at tatw.name> wrote:

> If people on the internet agree with you does it help you win arguments
> :), if so you should definitely use linux...
>
> One potentially interesting alternative is the UNIX implementation on
> windows 10. I've no experience, but would be interested in others'
> (including yours).
>
> I would throw two additional potentially important factors:
>
> * Licensing for scaling and development (this is one of those annoying
> human issues where you actually have to talk to people)
>
> * Build-debug-modify cycle on development and deployment. Do this wrong
> and people end up spending all their time reading reddit and feeling
> depressed. VMs can really slow this stuff down.
>
> On 31 Jan 2017 3:28 p.m., "Jonathan Hartley" <tartley at tartley.com> wrote:
>
>> Hey all,
>>
>> I'm joining a small company with an existing service-based infrastructure
>> written in C# & F#, on Windows Server on AWS.
>>
>> They want me to write some new services in Python. I'm wondering whether
>> to host these Python services on Linux or on Windows.
>>
>>
>> In favour of Linux:
>>
>> L1. I'm by far more familiar with Linux.
>>
>> L2. Linux is Python's natural home. I expect the ecosystem to work at its
>> best there.
>>
>>
>> In favour of Windows:
>>
>> W1. I don't want to put up a barrier to the existing C# devs from working
>> on the Python services because they don't have a Linux install. (although I
>> guess this is circumvented by them using a VM)
>>
>> W2. I don't want to cause a devops headache by introducing heterogeneous
>> OS choices.
>>
>> W3. As a specific example of W2, some places I've worked at have had
>> local dev environments spin up all our services in VMs or containers on the
>> local host, so we can system test across all services. I fear heterogeneous
>> server OSes will make significantly harder to do. They also want me to lead
>> the charge on this sort of test setup, so this is going to be my problem.
>>
>> Thoughts welcome.
>>
>>     Jonathan
>>
>> --
>> Jonathan Hartley    tartley at tartley.com    http://tartley.com
>> Made out of meat.   +1 507-513-1101        twitter/skype: tartley
>>
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