Tim Peters – Dispelling Information Asymmetry
tim-one.github.io
Tim Peters – Dispelling Information Asymmetry
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Re: Tim Peters – Dispelling Information Asymmetry
#2[flagged]
Re: Tim Peters – Dispelling Information Asymmetry
#3There have been other bans of dubious merit, but this one hit a nerve because in many ways Tim Peters gave the Python core development team its soul.
He had playful and witty style backed by deep technical acumen. His little nudges provided the team with quiet leadership and direction over a quarter century.
One core developer (the mathematician) recently quit over this and said, "he was the best of us".
Re: Tim Peters – Dispelling Information Asymmetry
#4Some previous related discussions on this:
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41212788 ["The Shameful Defenestration of Tim" by Chris McDonough]
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41515766 ["A Mess in the Python Community", lwn.net]
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41385546 ["A post by Guido van Rossum removed for violating Python community guidelines"]
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41314393 ["Calling for a Vote of No Confidence in the Python Steering Council"]
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41234180 ["Core Python developer suspended for three months"]
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41187470 ["Three month suspension for Python core developer"]
Re: Tim Peters – Dispelling Information Asymmetry
#5Another writeup:
The Shameful Defenestration of Tim
https://chrismcdonough.substack.com/p/the-shameful-defenestr...
Re: Tim Peters – Dispelling Information Asymmetry
#6For those who don't know the name, Tim Peters is the author of "The Zen of Python". He is the one who uniquely captured was Python is all about with this inspirational little poem:
The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters
Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!
Re: Tim Peters – Dispelling Information Asymmetry
#7I think one of the hardest problems in community moderation is finding good moderators.
A moderator's job description involves outlining fault in other people's words and occasionally punishing them for it. That sort of thing is tedious to most people, but thrilling to some very emotionally unhealthy ones. Few people who want the job can be trusted with the power.
I fear the python steering council has been lost to people who don't have the maturity to talk through problems in a healthy way.
Re: Tim Peters – Dispelling Information Asymmetry
#8At least for now, there's more content available from https://tim-one.github.io/psf/ . I checked the repository - it's only a couple of days old, so a new effort. A few of the commits are by David Mertz, too, which is interesting. My own articles are linked, too, which of course I appreciate. (I still have more to write on the topic, but I've already fallen too far behind in writing things which aren't about the PSF.)
Re: Tim Peters – Dispelling Information Asymmetry
#9There have been other bans of dubious merit, but this one hit a nerve because in many ways Tim Peters gave the Python core development team its soul. He had playful and witty style backed by deep technical acumen. His little nudges provided the team with quiet leadership and direction over a quarter century. One core developer (the mathematician) recently quit over this and said, "he was the best of us".
>One core developer (the mathematician) recently quit over this
Sorry, who exactly are you referring to?
Re: Tim Peters – Dispelling Information Asymmetry
#10If the Python Software Foundation is going to ban experienced CPython core developers, it's unfortunate, but I wish those driven out went straight to work on PyPy instead. Perhaps this way it could receive the extra impulse necessary to take off among the masses. It's a seriously underrated project.