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

mail.python.org

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

#621

Post by skywhopper »

password4321 wrote: post #3

> Now that PEP 572 is done, I don't ever want to have to fight so hard for a PEP and find that so many people despise my decisions. PEP 572: Python assignment expressions has been accepted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17448439

Yeesh, that’s a sad thing to burn out over. Python made this decision to avoid assignment expressions a long time ago and has done fine without this capability. Why not just leave well enough alone? Adding a new variation to assignment syntax (just because of the opinion that = vs == is too confusing (even though C and Ruby and many other languages deal with it fine)) is just going to add more confusion to the language. For a line saved here and there?

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

#622

Post by gsich »

patejam wrote: post #343
fit2rule wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can never get into Python and end up with as much passion as you. For me, its a very powerful and useful language - no doubt about it. But the aesthetics of a whitespace language just don't jive with my 30+ years of experience writing code. No matter how many times I try over the past few decades, I just can't get passionate about writing Python code. I know its power, and I totally grok its value to our industry -…

The indentation should be almost the same as any other language. Unless you have an aversion to consistent code-style. Python whitespace was only annoying for me years ago when it still had trouble handling tabs and spaces in the same file, and you would run into literally invisible bugs. I haven't run into that in a long time, though.

tabs would be much better, but unfortunately pep8 dictates spaces.

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

#623

Post by skywhopper »

jstimpfle wrote: post #535
sbjs wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A programming language and the tools you use with it are tightly integrated: you're never using a language, you're always using a language via a tool. And if all C compilers you might use have warnings enabled for this buggy expression, then there's no problem.

The most important "program" that reads your source code is probably in your brain. You probably have some "tooling" in their that is on the watch for "if (x = y)" and other patterns, but I'm sure you'd prefer to not have to run it. As another counterexample let me give you "language tooling". For example, write a tool that generates a FFI from $LANGUAGE to C. Is it really so unimportant that $LANGUAGE is clean and s…

I disagree... I don’t really have this problem though. = and == are pretty visually distinct to me. As much as > and But the best solution is probably to just drop the = as an operator altogether.

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

#624

Post by skywhopper »

b0rsuk wrote: post #611
sbjs wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The most important "program" that reads your source code is probably in your brain." Not if you have a good Integrated Development Environment (or IDE for short)! That's an even better "program" than your brain, because it shows syntax errors and other warnings right next to your code. It will literally put little red squiggly lines right under `if (x = 1)` and show the file as red in your file explorer side-bar,…

You can't assume that every single person will have a good IDE. And you will be reading and maintaining code written by people who don't. In that case I prefer to deal with a language which guarantees no trivial errors.

I agree with your points about IDEs but alas no such language exists to keep you from simple errors.

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

#625

Post by uluyol »

OmarIsmail wrote: post #520
randomsearch wrote: post #459

Excluding the 2/3 debacle, Guido has overseen an incredible progression in Python. It has become a contemporary lingua franca for coding, and the concept of a “pythonic” approach has been hugely influential. I’m disappointed that he broke Eric Raymond’s rule: “When you lose interest in a program, your last duty to it is to hand it off to a competent successor.” The email sounds bitter, which is tremendously sad, and…

My guess for lack of successor is that he doesn't want to burden someone else. It's probably one of those things like being a head of state where you don't really know what it's like until you've done it yourself. So people that want to be Python maintainer do so because they don't know what they're asking for.

I saw it more of being that he doesn't want to impose a particular style of governance after removing himself from the project. The remaining devs should run it however they see fit.

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

#626

Post by pjmlp »

llukas wrote: post #499
pjmlp wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, many embedded developers will never move beyond C89 unless forced to do so. Meanwhile C22 work is ongoing.

> Well, many embedded compilers will never move beyond C89 unless vendor is forced to do so. FTFY

Not really, many of those developers do have C99 compilers with partial C11 support at their disposal.

There are almost no vendors left offering C89 only compilers.

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

#627

Post by mindfulplay »

gsich wrote: post #619
IgorPartola wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t know why you are being downvoted. Linus’s tirades and diatribes are famous for how brutally personal they get. I still maintain that they are a waste of time and he would be a more effective leader if he limited his responses to “this is a bad idea” or “this isn’t done right” instead of writing pages long personal attacks on other members of the project.

As an outsider: It's fun.

Software construction shouldn't need this level of drama or comedy.

It almost feels like hero worship.

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

#628

Post by vehementi »

woah wrote: post #170
jcelerier wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that having strong opinions on how others should be developing software is how communities become toxic like this. Depends on what you think the answer to "is programming an art or a science" is. People who build bridges are absolutely subject to "strong opinions" on how to build bridges. I am of the opinion that shipping software to others when under a contract without using all the facilities available to…

Thinking that linting and static typing will stop all errors is foolish (although I prefer both, myself). Cargo culting "best practices" is often useless, and is sometimes used as a crutch by developers who are bad at the much more important and much less quantifiable things, like code readability and architectural simplicity. Wanting your pet coding preferences to be enforced by criminal law is a sadomasochistic fan…

> Thinking that linting and static typing will stop all errors is foolish

Did you reply to the wrong post?

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

#629

Post by ShabbosGoy »

mindfulplay wrote: post #627
gsich wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an outsider: It's fun.

Software construction shouldn't need this level of drama or comedy. It almost feels like hero worship.

Or maybe Linus isn’t afraid to say what’s on his mind, and that’s why people respect him.

You should try it some time. I know when I started doing it on here, my karma plummeted (real world analogue is “reputation” or social standing). But at least my conscience is clear.

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

#630

Post by kqr »

ben509 wrote: post #127
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?

No, the bad decision was treating bytes and strings interchangeably in the first place. 99% of the hardest to fix breakage was due to that, and it was the right call to pay that price all at once.

I wish I could sufficiently express my frustration for this. It's such a common mistake too. If you design a language with a type for text, and your language has a type called "string" oh God please God let those two be the same thing.

There are so many languages in which the type "string" is not the one to use for strings...

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