[Python-ideas] Iterative development

[Zachary Ware]

I haven't been following this thread very closely, but I have to
disagree with you here, Anatoly.

On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 5:24 AM, anatoly techtonik <techtonik at gmail.com> wrote:
> It is quite obvious from outside that Python has some kind of process,

Which is well documented in several places.  It can be tricky to
always find all of those places, but anyone who is interested can ask,
and will be quickly shown where to look.

> but it is quite hard to sync to it for people from outside,

I'm not sure what you mean here.  Every contributor starts from
"outside" of Python.  I found no difficulty in getting started when I
did, and I've seen several people start contributing successfully
since then.  It would be very hard to go from nothing to suddenly
contributing huge patches to the innermost details of Python at a
rapid pace, but that's not really what people (especially people new
to open source development, like I was) should be doing anyway.  Start
slow and small, build from there, and it's an easy and painless
process.

> because it is not open

Here I must disagree emphatically.  My entire Python experience shows
me that everything about Python is as open as possible.  If you want
to know something, look for it.  If you can't find it, ask for it.  If
you can't be shown where it is, somebody (even yourself) will write it
down somewhere so the next person looking can find it.

> - is not completely clear how the planning is made,

I'm not sure what you mean here, what planning?  Anything that could
be construed as "planning" is done via the PEP process, which is well
documented in PEP 1.

> which tasks are available for current sprint, what you can help with and how to track
> the progress.

This is the very definition of a bug tracker, and Python's is quite
good for all of this.  There could stand to be some upkeep done on
some of the older issues: it would be good for an impartial person to
pick through and see whether an issue is still a problem, update any
patches to apply to current branches, manage the 'easy' tag, add the
proper people to the nosy list, etc.  This kind of thing would be a
great place for someone to contribute.  Honestly, just bringing all
tracker issues up to date would be a worthwhile sprint task in my
opinion.

-- 
Zach