[Python-Dev] User's complaints

[Neal Norwitz]

On 7/12/06, Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven <ashemedai at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

Jeroen,

Thank you very much for your feedback.  It helps.

> 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.

If it's pure python, why don't people just copy everything under
site-packages after installing?  They could/should run compileall
after that to recompile the .pyc files.  With 2.5 on 64-bit machines,
C extension modules *must* be recompiled due to lots of internal
changes.

One thing you didn't mention that I've heard from time to time is the
stdlib should be improved.  For example, cleaning up old modules.
Though I'm not really sure everyone has the same thing in mind when it
comes to improving the stdlib.

> 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.

Do you think you could help with the doc?  How can we get people,
especially tech writers, interested in improving the doc?  Most people
agree it's important, but few make time to really improve the doc.
We've talked about making it easier for people to contribute to the
docs, perhaps adding something like a wiki/comments.  Do you think
that would help?

> 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.

I'm not sure I understand your point.  Can you provide more info about
what you dislike/expect instead?

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

Great.  Thanks!

n