Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

mail.python.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 764 posts

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

#441

Post by some_account »

comesee wrote: post #431
nas wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, wh…

I'm not exactly implying that it's a mystery. Mystery or not it I think it warrants some public consideration. If the reason indeed was 0.1% jerks, that should be confirmed and addressed in writing.

I strongly agree with you, but i think a lot of programmers are so rational that they simply process the information and dont feel anything about it.

It's kind of cold to me, but I know this field is not filled with the emotional types...

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

#443

Post by sctb »

comesee wrote: post #369
sctb wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. Inflammatory generalizations with no evidence like this count as flamebait, so please eschew them. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I don't believe anything I said was flamebait. I could have provided evidence if it was asked for, but I was shut down and assumed malicious before I had a chance. For the record, here is a study on male chimpanzees: https://today.duke.edu/2016/10/ChimpanzeeDominance but the information I provided is generally true for all apes and is accepted amongst biologists. Males tend to challenge higher ranking males. Maybe it…

> Males tend to challenge higher ranking males.

You're making an astoundingly general claim and chimpanzees are not going to back it up. I understand that you might disagree, but there are community standards of discourse here that are not being met and we need you to work on that if you're going to comment.

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

#444

Post by alexchamberlain »

CrI0gen wrote: post #418
xg15 wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but because over the long term the market is going to dictate where Python goes and how it grows The market gave us the absolute mess that is HTML/CSS/Javascript today, so I'm sincerely hoping the Python community will keep agreeing on some greater design principles instead of leaving everything to market forces and pragmatism.

Hopefully it transitions into a similar way that C++ is managed.

Oh I hope not; I much prefer the much more regular release schedule of Python (though since I went from C++ to Python a few years ago, I understand C++'s development speed has picked up somewhat).

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

#445

Post by kk__ »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #427

I 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…

You are paying for python. You pay for any software product you use by not using an alternative.

OSS maintainers deserve respect but at a certain point they have turned their hobby in to their career, complete with clients and marketing. If you are willing to trust an open source project for your livelihood than the maintainer also has an obligation to respect that.

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

#446

Post by gaius »

sametmax wrote: post #93

It's going to be very interesting to see if things like: - pattern matching - inline exception catching - path inclusion in the built in - more functional tooling - lazy keywors That were BDFL-blocked, will go back to be debated in the mailing list in the next months. And if yes, will the community stands by its root or create a new era ? The consequences of which we will only really see in 10 years. Guido as done an…

Multi-line lambdas, I hope!

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

#447

Post by icebraining »

tialaramex wrote: post #300
icebraining wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who decides when there's rough consensus or broad acceptance for a change? You have a bunch of people with commit access to the python repository; of course you need some mechanism to decide what goes in. Rough consensus is what you need here. Why?

A rough consensus is trivially observable. Look around. Who's left saying that plan Foo is a bad idea? Just that one guy who is a total crank and thinks Python shouldn't support 64-bit processors? Nobody cares about him. How about people who think plan Foo is a good idea? Basically everybody who talked about it other than the crank: OK, that's rough consensus. If you have situations where your "bunch of people with c…

What if the core committers are generally decided for A but the language users at large are for B? The way you make those decisions is a mechanism, even if you don't want to name it.

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

#448

Post by about_help »

newen wrote: post #430
TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #427

I 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.

Agreed. No need to be a dick, but bug reports are often pretty cut and dry and often some frustration does leak into the tone. Any big project, whether code or some local government thing, will have some level of assholes.

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

#449

Post by n_o_u »

kk__ wrote: post #445
TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #427

I 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…

You are paying for python. You pay for any software product you use by not using an alternative. OSS maintainers deserve respect but at a certain point they have turned their hobby in to their career, complete with clients and marketing. If you are willing to trust an open source project for your livelihood than the maintainer also has an obligation to respect that.

Sorry, what exactly are you paying them?

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

#450

Post by shawndrost »

tptacek wrote: post #425
shawndrost wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean, nobody on the py-committers threads owes you anything. But OP was observing an apparent gap in their thinking -- and indirectly, stating there is a toxic element of culture that destroys leadership morale, which nobody is (publicly) commenting on.

I think you'd say the same, if you agreed that culture was a solvable contributor to GvR's exit (even if you, like me, knew he was leaving for market reasons eventually). By analogy, if 'dang said "I'm leaving yall, this sucks, elect a replacement" and we were like "cool who's it gonna be". That would be an error, and I think you would be at the top of the comment page saying "Also, let's all make some changes so that the next 'dang doesn't have a miserable life."

Post reply on HN