181–190 of 192 posts
I must be the only one in here who thinks $1.5M is a small sum compared to Anthropic's size and the amount of value they have gotten out of Python. Good press is cheaper than I thought.
I mean, it's 1.5M more than the foundation knows what to do with.
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Typed Python vs untyped Python is literally the same as TS vs JS, don't let others fool you into thinking somehow it's different. > TypeScript helps paper over like 90% of the holes in JavaScript Always kind of baffles me when people say this, how are you actually programming where 90% of the errors/bugs you have are related to types and other things TS addresses? I must be doing something very different when writing…
I mean, I'm one of the fools who would fool you into thinking it's different, since I use all four languages. ;) I can just skip the mypy run if I want to do untyped Python. I can't skip adding types if I'm writing TypeScript in most contexts; it's not valid TypeScript syntax. Conversely, I can't add types to JavaScript; it's not valid JavaScript syntax (jsdoc tags and running a static checker over that being a diffe…
It's a funny video, still after 15 years of seeing it, I'll give you that. But the number of times I'm bothered by accidentally triggering those scenarios in real-life? Could probably count that on one hand.
I also give you that TypeScript helps beginner JavaScript developers a ton, and that's no easy feat by itself, just because of those things you mention. Once you build up intuition about how things work in JavaScript though, those sort of bugs should stop happening though, otherwise I'd say you aren't really learning the language.
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But that's not the argument here. Python type hints allow checking correctness statically, which is what matters for agents.
> Python type hints allow checking correctness statically Not really. You can do some basic checking, like ensuring you don't pass a string into where an integer is expected, but your tests required to make sure that you're properly dealing with those integers (Python type hints aren't nearly capable enough to forgo that) would catch that anyway. The LLM doesn't care if the error comes from a type checker or test sui…
It's not Rust-level, but I'd argue it's better than C or Go's type systems.
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But that's not the argument here. Python type hints allow checking correctness statically, which is what matters for agents.
Yes then you might as well use some other language that uses types but also gets you performance. I agree the ecosystem is missing but hey we have LLMs now
Python is a good language. Its ecosystem is rich, and I find it very productive. I want to use it, but I also want as much static analysis as possible, so I use ruff and pyright.
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Wow, I didn't know you got a spot on the board, that's a great choice on their part! Thanks for giving your time. Yes, I was talking about Wages -- the day-to-day is surely complex, but I'm sure you'd agree that the president of the board is ultimately "above" the chief executive if push ever came to shove, at least on paper. I will grant that I used "running", which is quite unclear in hindsight! "Responsible for" o…
> I'm sure you'd agree that the president of the board is ultimately "above" the chief executive if push ever came to shove, at least on paper. That is not true of the PSF, nor of many (most?) other US nonprofits. Not on paper, and not practically speaking. The director reports to the board , but officers have little to no unitary power. You can go read the PSF’s bylaws if you like, and if you do you’ll see that offi…
I assume you have more experience than me in corporate governance, but this is such a fundamental truth that I've just gotta stick to my guns. The executives serve at the pleasure of the board. That's what the board is.
Also, like, do you know anything about Dawn? She’s been serving the Python community waaaay longer than she’s worked for Microsoft. Questioning her ethics based on absolutely nothing is unfounded and, honestly, pretty fucked up.
There’s this pernicious lie that Microsoft is somehow controlling the PSF. It’s based on about as much evidence as there is for Flat Earth, yet here it is again.
The fact of the matter is that the senior-most member of an important non-profit was/is employed in a lucrative, full-time, relatively open-ended role by a firm whose profits depend directly on the work of that non-profit. There's no accusations in that statement, and thus no room for it to be written off as a conspiracy theory.
In terms of why it matters: wouldn't it at least deserve a raised eyebrow if, say...
- The chair of the WHO was employed by J&J?
- The chair of the ACLU was employed by a political party?
- The chair of Make-A-Wish was employed by a Hollywood agency?
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> I'm sure you'd agree that the president of the board is ultimately "above" the chief executive if push ever came to shove, at least on paper. That is not true of the PSF, nor of many (most?) other US nonprofits. Not on paper, and not practically speaking. The director reports to the board , but officers have little to no unitary power. You can go read the PSF’s bylaws if you like, and if you do you’ll see that offi…
Nodding along with everything you wrote here, but one minor point for anyone who might read the bylaws and get confused. https://www.python.org/psf/bylaws/ > Section 5.15. Limits on Co-affiliation of Board Members. No more than one quarter (1/4) of the members of the Board of Directors may share a common affiliation as defined in Section 5.14. The PSF allows three board members to share an affiliation, 13 seats * 0.2…
B) Hacker news is crazy -- I didn't expect to spawn a thread that would get responses from actual board members, ex- or otherwise! I'd like to take a brief moment deep down into this thread to echo what I said to Simon above: thanks for giving your valuable time to help grow the best programming language & community to ever exist :)
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> Python type hints allow checking correctness statically Not really. You can do some basic checking, like ensuring you don't pass a string into where an integer is expected, but your tests required to make sure that you're properly dealing with those integers (Python type hints aren't nearly capable enough to forgo that) would catch that anyway. The LLM doesn't care if the error comes from a type checker or test sui…
I think you're underestimating the current state of the Python type system. With Python 3.12 and pyright or mypy in strict mode, it's very reliable, and it makes those kinds of tests unnecessary. This requires you to fully buy into the idea, though, with 100% of your codebase statically typed and using only typed libraries, unless you're comfortable writing wrappers. It's not Rust-level, but I'd argue it's better tha…
These partial type systems cannot replace any actually useful tests. I'll grant you that testing is the least understood aspect of computer science, leading to a lot of really poorly conceived tests out in the wild. I can buy that those bad, useless tests can be replaced — albeit weren't actually needed in the first place.
I must be the only one in here who thinks $1.5M is a small sum compared to Anthropic's size and the amount of value they have gotten out of Python. Good press is cheaper than I thought.
You are right, it is. But it would be a mistake for us to use this opportunity to attack them for it. We should applaud their donation today, and at another time assess the meager contributions of many companies that should be shamed.
A more impactful change from firms might be to celebrate and reward community contributions of their own employees. This can establish a more productive culture than just money. If an engineering company is willing to donate money (yay!), perhaps consider making sure that employees are celebrated for contributions they make in a manner that is similar to how we currently celebrate monetary transactions.
For an example of the opposite, Google laid off their entire Python team, something that also made HN front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40171125
Still crazy how little investment goes to Python given how critical it is to the ecosystem.
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I mean there were conversations in closed rooms nobody outside of the room knows about. What we know publicly is they refused the funding because it required them to drop DEI activities, which not only would have solved their funding issues but was the morally correct thing to do. The PSF should be focused on improving Python, it shouldn't be a political organization.
OK, thanks for making your position clear. You disagree with some of the core mission of the PSF. Luckily you are in the minority and the PSF is carrying on.
It seems he disagrees with the approach rather than the core mission; suggesting that instead of relying on reparations, to use those resources instead to fix the core issues with Python that demand those reparations in the first place.