[Python-Dev] User's complaints

[Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven]

On 7/5/06, Neal Norwitz <nnorwitz at gmail.com> wrote:
> For example, we heard grumblings about the releases coming too often.
> Once we went to an 18 month release schedule, there was minimal
> complaining.  It should be fairly safe to assume this silence means
> people think we are doing a good job.  What are the things that could
> be fixed that would silence the most number of user's complaints?

I frequent a lot of IRC channels either devoted to Python or heaving
people use Python a lot next to my own use so I think I can,
hopefully, give some comments. Of course, things are highly
subjective.

When some of us first saw what PEP 3000 suggested we were thinking:
shit, there goes Python. It incredibly felt like Python's best
measures were being dumbed down.

The release cycle is not bothering people from what I gather,
especially not given the fact that the world is still changing when it
comes to things like XML. What is bothering people is how you have to
reinstall all your site-packages when you go from one major version to
another. I understand this might be a difficult problem to tackle, but
I can also understand the hassle if people have more than 10-15
modules installed.

Another point is how the module documentation is very terse in a lot
of areas. Especially when it concerns what kind of exceptions a
particular function can/will raise. As a professional, part-time,
technical writer I wonder how to best tackle the entirety of the
documentation we have. (Note that this is in no way any jibe towards
Fred Drake, since I bet it's quite a bulk of documentation to work
with/on every time.)
Also it can get quite confusing when you need the introductory manual,
when the language reference and when the module documentation.

Things that struck me as peculiar is the old:

if __name__ == "__main__":
    whatever()

This is so out of tune with the rest of python it becomes a nuisance.

> PS.  One thing I tend to talk to users about is stability of the
> interpreter.  When I talk about crashing the interpreter, the most
> common first reaction I get is "you can crash the interpreter? How do
> you do that?"  I take that answer as a good sign. :-)

I've come relatively late to the Python scene, but ever since 2.2 I
never once managed to crash the interpreter.

I'll ask around and see what people are reporting to me as their top 3
or 5 Python complaints though.

-- 
Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven