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Notes from the Meeting on Python GIL Removal Between Python Core and Sam Gross

lukasz.langa.pl

81–90 of 105 posts

Re: Notes from the Meeting on Python GIL Removal Between Python Core and Sam Gross

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

12 references to people in one statement, 5 referring to the post author, 1 reference to social fraternity membership, 1 statement of authority. I'm not sure if there is a common name for this particular source of discomfort, but that quote definitely contains a lot of it. I'm a historical contributor to the Python source repository, but something about the social structure of the project has changed significantly in…

> The focus in the statement above no longer feels like it is on the actual productive output of the project itself, and in previous years it wasn't like that, nor needed to be like that. I don’t believe you. Python was never like this in the past, and has a long history of rejecting objectively good performance enhancements because the BDFL and friends wanted the implementation to remain a simple teaching example fo…

I have been a member of the Python community since 2002 and followed the lists for just as long, not least because of the quality of technical discussion up until the start of the 3.x saga.

I don't think anyone would deny Python has changed since then, I think most notably in the years following the release of Django, Python becoming a go-to web language, and the size of the community exploding.

Re: Notes from the Meeting on Python GIL Removal Between Python Core and Sam Gross

#82
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you prefer to support some weird arbitrary nameless closed source extensions, or have a multicore Python? There's nothing wrong with staying on an older LTS version of Python. Let the people with the nameless closed-source stuff stick with that. The beauty of open source is that they can fork the older, GIL-ful version of Python and maintain it, if they like. Multicore would be a tremendous boon to the langua…

> an older LTS version of Python There was an older LTS version of Python called Python 2.7. Last I checked people hated the transition and were still bitching about it in 2021.

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Re: Notes from the Meeting on Python GIL Removal Between Python Core and Sam Gross

#84
post #83

Python is used by a lot of "semi-technical" people (data scientists, researchers, hobbyists, etc). Removing the GIL isn't going to make their life any easier.

Nor won’t it make their lives any harder.

Re: Notes from the Meeting on Python GIL Removal Between Python Core and Sam Gross

#85
post #83

Python is used by a lot of "semi-technical" people (data scientists, researchers, hobbyists, etc). Removing the GIL isn't going to make their life any easier.

Are these people writing a lot of low-level multi-threaded code?

Re: Notes from the Meeting on Python GIL Removal Between Python Core and Sam Gross

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"become a core developer" I assume... as if somehow non-core developers are inferior and not-part-of-the-club.

Perhaps, but it is not a fraternity. There is, as far as I can tell, non-males in the group.

I think you’re thinking of a college frat. Fraternities in this sense are not restricted to men.

Re: Notes from the Meeting on Python GIL Removal Between Python Core and Sam Gross

#88
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contributors can be extinguished after they have done their duty. One of the most famous contributors ever spoke about "minibosses" the last time he was seen dealing with the Python core bureaucrats. The situation is even worse now.

Can you give us more details about this ? Do you have a particular story in mind ? It seems a lot of fresh blood is comming to the python project recently, so I'm interested in what you have to say. But why are you using a throwaway account ? And that you that have been answering the other comments with also newly created accounts ?

I can share the sentiment that PSF and the core team has become something like “old boys club”, and no, new core developers didn’t change this ambience you get when you read their forums/mailing lists and twitters (better avoid twitters though).

I don’t have anything about a community being an old boys’ club (would be nice to be in one some day, I reckon it’s what older people’s equivalent of a “safe space” is), it’s that they try hard to pretend they are something else that irks me.

But for the life of me I couldn’t find “python” and “minibosses” mentioned in the same document on the internet, except for an integration testing package and a computer game. So I think the story alluded to is bogus.

There’s a minuscule likelihood of it all being a twitter drama with key characters then nuking their tweets or deleting their accounts, but if it was of any significance some blog would have echoed it.

Re: Notes from the Meeting on Python GIL Removal Between Python Core and Sam Gross

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but it is not a fraternity. There is, as far as I can tell, non-males in the group.

I think you’re thinking of a college frat. Fraternities in this sense are not restricted to men.

I'm not an American and so I have no sense of college frats. I'm thinking of Fraternal Orders which are very explicitly male-only organisations. The word fraternity literally means "brotherhood".

The choice of the word "fraternity" by the poster above was deliberate and seems to be being used to imply a more severe exclusion of others.

Re: Notes from the Meeting on Python GIL Removal Between Python Core and Sam Gross

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1 reference to social fraternity membership I'm struggling to find that in the quote. What is the fraternity in question?

"become a core developer" I assume... as if somehow non-core developers are inferior and not-part-of-the-club.

You are wrongly assuming that the core developers are a club that is putting up barriers in order to stay exclusive.

Much to the opposite, just like many other big and important open source projects, they are actively trying to recruit, mentor and urge people to come as far "in" as possible. It takes a lot of work and dedication to get acquainted with a code base.

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