[RayDonnelly]

Conda is a package manager for more than Python. It manages libraries that are shared between Python and R and other tools. This isn't possible with a purely Python-based solution.

It also does envs better than most other solutions since it will prefer hardlinks which allows environmental isolation at a very small cost in terms of disc space.

Full disclosure: I work for Anaconda Inc. where I am trying my best to make package management and scientific computing easier.

[jdiez17]

Shared libraries were invented at a time when disk space was very scarce. In my opinion, the fact that we still use dynamic linking today is largely an accident of history. Literally the only advantage over static linking (or distributing any shared libraries along with your application) is that you save some space, at the cost of requiring a complex package management system. Also, a sufficiently smart filesystem can deduplicate this transparently.

And of course, it makes distribution of any application that uses shared libraries a whole lot more difficult.

Disk space is the cheapest and most abundant computing resource in 2017. If you want to make these packages more widely available, just create wheels/whatever the R equivalent is. Good, well understood, and interoperable tooling for these already exists.

[kalefranz]

Dynamic linking is hugely helpful when, for example, you want to update to the latest openssl without updating half the binaries on your system. That packages are statically including openssl in wheels, and then wheel versions being explicitly pinned in projects, is introducing some juicy attack vectors.