>(I'll spare you the list of medical issues.)
It is bad news, is Guido fine?
“I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”
421–430 of 764 posts
Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”
#422Guido van Rossum, "the creator of python", created the following page to show he has aged over the years:
https://gvanrossum.github.io/pics.html
I prefer perl, but thanks for python!
Diversity is good always :)
Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some root cause analysis would be nice. Because whatever went wrong that caused GvR to step down isn't solved and the future structure whatever form it will take will most likely not be quite as resilient against this as GvR was. Also, an apology for the way this turned out would be seemly.
Whatever apology GvR is owed, it's none of my business. The post-BDFL continuity plan is super relevant to me, but I can say with some confidence that GvR does not need me as a witness to whatever psychological remediation he may or may not need for the assignment expression debacle. It's not my place to psychoanalyze him, and he rather clearly didn't ask me to. So again: why, as a professional who interacts with the…
Why you should care: it's relevant to the post-BDFL continuity plan, because 1) the stressors that pushed GvR out will also act upon the new decisionmakers, 2) those stressors can be reduced, and 3) change-of-control is innately risky and we should be extra-worried (at this moment) about existing, important stressors.
Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”
#424Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really? I'm not suggesting that great care shouldn't be taken; I'm suggesting that there's no evidence that it hasn't, and that neither you nor me are particularly important players in the story of what is happening, and that nobody owes us an explanation. Certainly, a concerted effort to prevent GvR from stepping down as BDFL seems silly.
I'm not implying an effort to prevent GvR from stepping down, but I don't think the lack of public consideration among core devs on why this happened is healthy either.
I don't see it as mystery as why it happened. Perhaps you are thinking there was some specific trigger for his stepping down. I don't think so. When the language becomes as popular as Python has, the head of the project is going to become a target for a lot of unwanted attention. The "assignment expression" PEP was a good example of that but not the sole cause.
Even if infuriating jerks are 0.1% of the population, when your language has hundreds of thousands of users, you are going to deal with a lot of jerks. Frankly, I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did without going mad or something. I would not wish for any of my friends to be subjected to that kind of attention.
We were very lucky to have him leading the project for so long. Python will survive without a BDFL and I hope he enjoys the vacation.
Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whatever apology GvR is owed, it's none of my business. The post-BDFL continuity plan is super relevant to me, but I can say with some confidence that GvR does not need me as a witness to whatever psychological remediation he may or may not need for the assignment expression debacle. It's not my place to psychoanalyze him, and he rather clearly didn't ask me to. So again: why, as a professional who interacts with the…
Why you should care: it's relevant to the post-BDFL continuity plan, because 1) the stressors that pushed GvR out will also act upon the new decisionmakers, 2) those stressors can be reduced, and 3) change-of-control is innately risky and we should be extra-worried (at this moment) about existing, important stressors.
I care that those concerns are being addressed. I do not care whether they're addressed in public in a way designed to mollify any particularized concerns I might have, because I am not a member of the Python core team, and they don't owe me that.
Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”
#426Guido van Rossum, "the creator of python", created the following page to show he has aged over the years: https://gvanrossum.github.io/pics.html I prefer perl, but thanks for python! Diversity is good always :)
As a big influencer, Guido, "the creator of python", even inspired austin powers character
Guido (1995) https://gvanrossum.github.io/images/Guido@200dpi.jpg
Austin Powers (1997) https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYWY1ZTdlZTEtYWRjOS00...
Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”
#427I don't know if it's just me, but if you read the forums and bug reports related to open source projects, it feels like programmers today are a really entitled lot.
The tone that people take when filing bug reports for what is basically free software is reprehensible. People are doing work for FREE to benefit you, and you take a tone with them like you are a prince and they are your royal goblet holders? Who taught these human beings their manners?
I totally understand the frustration when you write a large system in Python and then the Python committee makes a breaking change that makes your life very difficult. However, you didn't pay for Python! These sorts of changes should be expected, and if you didn't expect it, you are the fool. And in any case, you aren't paying these people a cent, so speak politely to them. You are basically a charity case from their perspective.
Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”
#428Python is the language I chose to teach my 7 yr old daughter. Much thanks to the uncluttered syntax which requires a minimum number of explanations of non-essential parts of a program. Thanks Guido for giving us Python!
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Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”
#429Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The operations that make sense with character strings would also make sense with bytes when an encoding is specified. Therefore, there should just be a way of annotating bytes with a suggested encoding. That's the ruby solution. I like the ruby API here. When ruby introduced it in 1.9, it did cause similar upgrade pain, since you weren't used to having your strings tagged with an encoding, and suddenly they all kin…
Sure, there are growing pains with any breaking change. Do you think the ruby 1.8 -> 1.9 transition went more smoothly than the python 2.7 -> 3.x... transition?
My impression is that it did, yes.
Re: “I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”
#430I don't know if it's just me, but if you read the forums and bug reports related to open source projects, it feels like programmers today are a really entitled lot. The tone that people take when filing bug reports for what is basically free software is reprehensible. People are doing work for FREE to benefit you, and you take a tone with them like you are a prince and they are your royal goblet holders? Who taught t…
In the majority of cases, they are getting paid to code it (by some company, organization, etc). And they benefit from the popularity of the the software. So I don't think I need to see myself as a charity case or adopt a please please please attitude with them.