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

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

#201

Post by swyx »

LyndsySimon wrote: post #178
swyx wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're missing a body that can decide in case of implementation disputes over the other two. we could even compare it to a court. since python is so huge, we would have several levels for triaging and appeals. and the top one would reign supreme.

This would be the that body - it would be the final arbiter of what gets approved. The Tribune of the Plebs would not be able to approve anything at all, but would be able to unilaterally refuse to allow changes to be made. The UN Security Council is somewhat similar in that respect, though comprised of more members. New matters are approved by majority vote, but the five permanent members can veto anything that gets…

TIL Tribune of the Plebs was a real thing. I was just parsing plebs as internet lingo for commonfolk :)

and in case it wasnt clear i was referencing the US tripartite governance model

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

#203

Post by at-fates-hands »

When I first started getting into programming (was not a CS major in college) everybody said to start learning Python first.

I started digging in and a lot of concepts were easy to grasp and I learned quite a bit until I started doing front-end work and I stopped working with it.

This year, my buddy who got me into it originally, suggested I look at django and I've been having fun with that in the past few months. Made me think about picking Python back up and working with it again as the front-end scene is just so crazy right now.

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

#204

Post by kwhitefoot »

krylon wrote: post #86
Y_Y wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good read. I feel like the "customer is always right" mentality does quite a bit of harm to OSS support. Also reminds me of that dev (who I can't seem to search up) who had their email printed as part of a open-source software license in a car manual and would get ridiculous email from people who had car trouble.

OTOH, way back, when I had a TV receiver card by Hauppage, and a new Linux kernel broke something, I posted a description of my troubles on Usenet, and within 24 hours, the person who had written the Video4Linux subsystem replied asking for more details (which I gladly provided), and a few days later, the bug was fixed. That, I think, was the most awesome "customer support" experience of my life. I did make a point o…

I had the same experience. Suddenly Emacs Gnus reader stopped working, about 11:00 on a Friday morning. I posted the bug and had a reply from Lars Ingebrigtsen with an explanation and a workaround by 13:00. I think it was fixed by the beginning of the following week.

My experience of trying to get help from Microsoft on the other hand is, well let's just say not quite so impressive; they kept me on hold for 45 minutes once and never did solve my problem.

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

#205

Post by sincerely »

jpfed wrote: post #150
_wmd wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology cannot solve social problems

Wasn't it nice that you could reply to this comment over the web rather than physically going to the commenter and telling them what you thought? Boy, this technology sure gave a helpful assist to the social problem of communication.

That's not a social problem being solved, that's a technoogical problem. a social problem of communication would have much more to do with the behaviour of people communicating, and one could argue that the internet has made this worse

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

#207

Post by jessaustin »

krylon wrote: post #75

I haven't used Python in many years, but it was the first programming language I really could say I loved. Everything was was either completely in tune with my intuition or well-documented. I had a lot of fun with Python, and I learned a lot about programming by (ab)using it. I am very grateful to Guido van Rossum and the work he has done, and I wish him all the best for his future.

I totally agree with this. In 1999 I had only used C and shell (well lisp a little bit in college), and python was such a breath of fresh air...

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

#208

Post by jstarfish »

Alex3917 wrote: post #190
Y_Y wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good read. I feel like the "customer is always right" mentality does quite a bit of harm to OSS support. Also reminds me of that dev (who I can't seem to search up) who had their email printed as part of a open-source software license in a car manual and would get ridiculous email from people who had car trouble.

> "customer is always right" mentality does quite a bit of harm to OSS support. It goes both ways. All too often people promote their new library on HN and Reddit, wait until a bunch of people are using it as a dependency, and then abandon it without even telling anyone whether or not it’s abandoned.

Not using toy libraries for production systems is a lesson every young developer learns early on in their career.

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

#210

Post by ocschwar »

sjm-lbm wrote: post #104
ashelmire wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hilarious because it's literally a one-liner that Rasmus provided for him.

It's more hilarious because his response to that (basically, "this is tax software so there will be a lot of QA when we make that change") is at least sort of legitimate, but only because his accounting software evidently only works due to undefined corner cases in the underlying platform, and that's just ... wow.

The underlying platform? WOuld that be Python or the tax law?
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