[wlpu]

Poetry was the best pragmatic tool for python at one point, but it certainly was the developers project. That is to say, it introduced different and unfamiliar version specifiers to python, these are common place in other ecosystems, but this definitely was one of the barriers to success. Another came down to the applications code style and architecture, poetry is not written well, it tried to reinvent everything from the ground up in python package management, including it's own dependency resolution algorithm and cli library. I never could use it in isolation either, always had to combine it with other tools like Make. I once looked to contribute to poetry, it didn't take long for me to realise that it was poorly written and most of the new development efforts (e.g. the plugin system) were slowly developed by the project creator seemingly in isolation, meanwhile the rest of the development on the project slowly ground to a snails pace, at one point recently no new version (major, minor or patch) had been released in almost 18 months while the bug reports, issues and PRs stacked up, none addressed. Some of the most egregious issues were bugs in the private package repository support, some providers just wouldn't work and this can be a mandatory requirement for some organisations. One of the worst and most damning things about poetry, when it was actually releasing updates, was the regressions, it happened every single time, without fail, you only need to search GitHub issues for the proof. There are so many things that it could do that it does not, probably due to a poorly written foundation, a lack of leadership or organisation, almost definitely all of the above. Now it's just a tool that half works and has created a lot of animosity towards tools attempting to right it's wrongs. More than anything I am disappointed, I struggle to put my frustrations and whole feelings here, this is really what failure looks like from a thousand angles.

Recently I've ventured out to pdm. It is truly a sublime experience. It is everything poetry should have been and with a mere fraction of development team and effort, it really shows how much of a waste poetry is. Pdm has given me hope again. I only wish that more tools like Pycharm would support it, but really the experience isn't missing much at all. For those of you who are feeling the pain of poetry, I can't convey enough how much more pdm is, it's not perfect but if you try it in earnest and you won't be disappointed.