Python.org Redesign Request for Proposals • Hacker News Board

Re: Python.org Redesign Request for Proposals

#21

Post by mvanveen » Wed, May 23, 2012, 1:38 PM UTC

This is definitely a shameless plug, but I thought it might be worth mentioning here that my current side project is a MIT-licensed Python documentation API called "Python Docs," available at: http://github.com/mvanveen/docs .

The goal is to leverage static analysis as much as possible to provide an intuitive API for Python documentation primitives. So far I have used the project to power a code browsing interface that I recently started working on, but I think that others could find the project really useful.

Re: Python.org Redesign Request for Proposals

#22

Post by its_so_on » Wed, May 23, 2012, 1:40 PM UTC

jnoller wrote: post #12

its_so_on wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: now I'm at -3. Still, I'm going to let this ride (not delete it), as even though it is not about the web site, I think my suggestion is serious and would benefit Python - i.e. get to the right audience here. I will also add that Python is my favorite language, and I hold it in a completely separate league from every other language I'm familiar with. Nothing else comes close. That said. "Python.org Redesign Requ…

THe best way for people to contribute to Python the language is to take a look at the devguide http://docs.python.org/devguide/ and if they're new, join the core mentorship list: http://pythonmentors.com/

I'm saying that you need to broaden your input so that the people who would look at the devguide aren't the only people you're hearing from. Python can approach a local maximum that way, but the things that would make it truly awesome and attractive to web developers would be too out of the box for someone to think of like that. I'm saying, ask everyone, the whole community.

Re: Python.org Redesign Request for Proposals

#23

Post by neovive » Wed, May 23, 2012, 1:41 PM UTC

Best of luck with the redesign. I recently started learning Python and finally realize what I've been missing for so many years.

I'm not sure of the intended audience of python.org (new users vs. experienced), but as a brand new Python user, the current website is filled with lots of great information, but is a bit intimidating. I think the Python language really sells itself and it would be nice to see some simple examples on the homepage as is done on the NodeJS page (e.g. http://nodejs.org/).

Reading through some of the posts on Guido van Rossum's blog was also very inspiring ("Python in the Scientific World", "The depth and breadth of Python"). It's great to see a BDFL so actively involved. There are so many great stories about how Python is used successfully across in so many industries and among well-known brands. It would be great to see more of this on the main page.

Re: Python.org Redesign Request for Proposals

#24

Post by krschultz » Wed, May 23, 2012, 1:43 PM UTC

A couple years back I was working at Bug Labs and we relied heavily on the Openembedded project. We contributed source code patches as you would expect, but one unique contribution was having our designer make a new logo for Openembedded. You can see it on their website today.

This doesn't seem to occur to people very often, but if your company is relying on an open source project, source code patches are not the only way to contribute back.

Can you spare some time from your designer? Help out with a logo or website design work.

Do you have a doc writer? We all joke about RTFM, but if there is no manual that doesn't help much.

There are some things that developers don't necessarily want to do, so those areas often lack on open source projects based on volunteers. A company using their resources to fill in some of the gaps helps a lot.

I also don't understand why designers will compete on 99designs but don't seem to contribute to open source that often. If you are trying to break into the industry by showcasing your work, why prefer the 1 in 30 odds of having your design chosen in a crowd sourcing competition over actually helping out an existing project?

Re: Python.org Redesign Request for Proposals

#25

Post by mvanveen » Wed, May 23, 2012, 1:45 PM UTC

jnoller wrote: post #2

As one of the people behind this, and a PSF director I am here to answer any questions people might have.

Am I correct in believing that the scope of these documentation proposals is limited to the python standard library and runtime, and does not include the Python package index?

Re: Python.org Redesign Request for Proposals

#26

Post by briancurtin » Wed, May 23, 2012, 1:49 PM UTC

pm wrote: post #6

jnoller wrote: post #2

As one of the people behind this, and a PSF director I am here to answer any questions people might have.

A question, out of curiosity and not hostile in any way: what's wrong with the current one?

I'm currently "in charge" of posting most of the PSF related updates, like meeting minutes and resolutions. It's only a once-a-month thing, but it's a huge pain in the ass. To do this, I hop over to my SVN checkout of the site, make a change, build it locally, then `svn ci` my changes and hope they build on the real site and hope we both have the same versions of everything.

I'm currently writing up a doc for a non-techie to take over that task and the steps to go from a clean machine to a functioning system that can make even simple typo fixes are barbaric.

Re: Python.org Redesign Request for Proposals

#27

Post by jnoller » Wed, May 23, 2012, 1:53 PM UTC

mvanveen wrote: post #25

jnoller wrote: post #2

As one of the people behind this, and a PSF director I am here to answer any questions people might have.

Am I correct in believing that the scope of these documentation proposals is limited to the python standard library and runtime, and does not include the Python package index?

The RFP covers the design (UI/UX/IA) of the Python.org site and back end workflows. PyPI is a separate application in the whole site, and so it's back end code will not change, but it will probably adopt the new CSS/Style

Re: Python.org Redesign Request for Proposals

#28

Post by jnoller » Wed, May 23, 2012, 1:55 PM UTC

neovive wrote: post #23

Best of luck with the redesign. I recently started learning Python and finally realize what I've been missing for so many years. I'm not sure of the intended audience of python.org (new users vs. experienced), but as a brand new Python user, the current website is filled with lots of great information, but is a bit intimidating. I think the Python language really sells itself and it would be nice to see some simple e…

we actually put a lot of thought into the target audiences: http://pythonorg-redesign.readthedocs.org/en/latest/#audienc... - and I concur, a frontpage without a language example, or slide show of examples is almost a non starter for me

Re: Python.org Redesign Request for Proposals

#29

Post by jnoller » Wed, May 23, 2012, 1:57 PM UTC

its_so_on wrote: post #22

jnoller wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

THe best way for people to contribute to Python the language is to take a look at the devguide http://docs.python.org/devguide/ and if they're new, join the core mentorship list: http://pythonmentors.com/

I'm saying that you need to broaden your input so that the people who would look at the devguide aren't the only people you're hearing from. Python can approach a local maximum that way, but the things that would make it truly awesome and attractive to web developers would be too out of the box for someone to think of like that. I'm saying, ask everyone, the whole community.

This is why we had a Web Dev summit at PyCon US 2012: https://us.pycon.org/2012/community/WebDevSummit/ - to discuss what we can do as a language and community to make it more "attractive" and ease the on-ramp for the web community as a whole.

So, other efforts are under way for this, and orthogonal to the current RFP

Re: Python.org Redesign Request for Proposals

#30

Post by Alex3917 » Wed, May 23, 2012, 1:58 PM UTC

hising wrote: post #14

One thing that would really make the website work better is to make pages like http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html hierarchical with an overview and one or two sub levels so each function gets its own page, making it easier to find via search (The Google) and do dynamic linking from IDE:s or whatever if the url routing were set up smart. Today when you search for 'random.choice python' you get to the random…

The first thing I do when learning any piece of technology is putting all the docs into a mindmap, e.g. here is one I made the other day for Jinja2:

http://www.alexkrupp.com/Jinja%20docs.html

FreeMind .mm file: http://www.alexkrupp.com/Jinja%20docs.mm

Ideally the HTML of the Python docs should be structured in such a way that the all the built-in functions, string functions, regex functions, etc. can be dumped into a mindmap automatically each time the documentation is changed.