“I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL” • Hacker News Board

Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”

#131

Post by robbrit » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 5:13 PM UTC

tialaramex wrote: post #64

Guido's question gets to the heart of the problem: "So what are you all going to do? Create a democracy? Anarchy? A dictatorship? A federation?" No. None of the above. These are mechanisms which make choices when a choice must be made, even if none of the options is broadly acceptable. An appropriate mechanism for, say, governing a country. Python isn't a country, it's just a programming language, so when there aren'…

Consensus approaches are terrible ways to design languages. It's why Java took so long to evolve, where C# rapidly adapted to changing needs; and why C++ lingered in a long state of crappiness until Stroustroup came back and is now pushing improvements every three years.

Languages generally do well when there is a sense of leadership and vision for where it is going. Consensus is terrible at providing both.

Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”

#132

Post by romanows » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 5:13 PM UTC

pvg wrote: post #102

coldtea wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Python 3 breakage and async turned out to be prescient, fantastic decisions. Async maybe. Python 3 breakage? Did you forgot the /s tag?

This is a particularly ill-chosen thread to deliberately try to re-flame this flamewar. Most threads are.

Heaven forbid that someone responds to a point made in another post. On a public internet discussion forum. In a discussion about the context and effects of divisive and difficult decisions. /s

Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”

#133

Post by zbyte64 » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 5:13 PM UTC

_wmd wrote: post #92

VikingCoder wrote: post #83

I've begged GitHub to institute forms of government for repos. For X action to happen, Y percent of the pool of people in the Z list need to approve it. Membership of the Z list is granted when W percent of the T pool approve it. Modifying the rules of government of this repo can only happen when L percent of the R pool approve it. And on and on... I could imagine a city or state government actually having its laws e…

Technology cannot solve social problems

Try solving social problems without technology.

Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”

#134

Post by ben509 » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 5:14 PM UTC

21 wrote: post #113

icebraining wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If both kids want to eat candy as dinner, is the father blocking that not benevolent because he's outnumbered?

There is a reason kids aren't allowed to legally decide for themselves until 18. In Python land, there is this saying "we are all adults here". Being an adult also means avoiding creating needless drama.

They are, but they're adults who work in completely different environments and thus have wildly divergent needs.

One contrast:

You have some people who in business and want to do keep an old code base working forever.

You have some people who have no business experience and have no idea what a bottom line is, but might need a feature for a critical open source project that many others will use.

Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”

#135

Post by ryanisnan » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 5:14 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #100

21 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the B is for Benevolent. When a huge part of the community is against, does that B still stands?

If both kids want to eat candy as dinner, is the father blocking that not benevolent because he's outnumbered?

In nearly all cases where parenting is present, children are inferior to their parents in both intelligence and judgement.

This analogy does not work in software.

Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”

#136

Post by amorousf00p » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 5:15 PM UTC

God, I can empathize even if only at a much less prominent vantage. The skills, will and effort involved are at a level far more than a 50+ can reasonably sustain into the early 70s (if that is the prospect).

Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”

#137

Post by freehunter » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 5:15 PM UTC

vxNsr wrote: post #72

sjm-lbm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's PHP and not Python, but every time I read something like this from a major open source figure, I always think of this old PHP mailing list thread: https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=50696

O_o I wonder how many times I've spoken to someone and didn't realize who it was/how important they were because of the anonymity of the internet.

I know I've gotten into heated arguments on here or on Reddit with very well-known figures in the tech world without realizing who they are until after the fact. Luckily I don't think I've every argued with a developer about their own product before... that I know of.

Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”

#138

Post by theandrewbailey » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 5:15 PM UTC

thinkingemote wrote: post #116

What does BDFL stand for?

A list (but Guido is the original): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life

Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”

#139

Post by mattio » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 5:16 PM UTC

Enjoy your well deserved holiday! Send us a postcard ;-)

Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”

#140

Post by jimmaswell » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 5:16 PM UTC

chimeracoder wrote: post #70

jnwatson wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was controversial syntax, inline assignment-as-expression. There's always a tension between "keep it simple stupid" and "let's make it better", especially when a large user demographic of Python are non-professional-programmers. Interestingly, C++ is going through the same process, with lots of great ideas being proposed, but the sum total of them being an even more complicated language (on top of what is probably…

> Python 3 breakage and async turned out to be prescient, fantastic decisions. The jury is still out on the Python 3 decision, to be honest. Heck, Python 2 is still officially supported until 2020. Python 3 adoption is increasing, but the instability and breakage that it introduced caused a lot of knock-on effects throughout the Python community that held it back and hindered its adoption and mindshare. It'll take a…

I'll probably never switch for personal use. The print statement change is intolerable to me. It would have cost them nothing to just leave the old syntax in. It's supposed to be a quick and convenient scripting language and they're actively working to make it more verbose and less convenient. I also still don't like not being able to use "string" objects as dumb byte containers, like I do with an IRC bot that doesn't crash with an encoding exception trying to write IRC control characters into a text file. Yes, I know I can work around that wrapping everything up nice and pretty to tell python "this isn't a real string it's okay you don't need to throw an encoding exception ssh." I just don't think that's good design.