* separated values

[Magnus Lie Hetland]

In article <mailman.1011304709.3610.python-list at python.org>, Cliff Wells wrote:
>On Thu, 17 Jan 2002 12:46:55 -0600
>Skip Montanaro wrote:
[...]
>> Cliff,
>> 
>> You obviously need to hang out on help at python.org for awhile. ;-) 
>
>Is this some sort of euphemism?  Sort of like "You need more training"
>really means "You don't know what the **** you're doing"? ;-)

I would think the meaning was: "You really ought to hear how
problematic this seems to be for the newbies", not that you were a
newbie ;)

>Many
>> questions come from people who can't even find the current Windows
>> installer, or if they do, can't figure out what to do with it.  They are
>> going to me miserable if they have to download and install multiple
>> mini-distributions.
>
>Believe me, I'm unhappily aware of the level of knowledge of the common
>Windows user.  Still, aren't these people aspiring programmers?  Shouldn't
>they have just a /bit/ more tenacity?  Sigh...

Why would they be programmers? My main interest in having standard
things included in the standard libraries is that the end-user will
only need two things: (1) A Python installation, and (2) My code.

Of course, I could bundle all the necessary stuff in my code; that is
probably more reasonable than having the user search for some usable
CSV module etc.

However, I'm *not* talking about programmers here. I think writing
programs for relatively naïve end-users is one of the more problematic
areas of Python programming at the moment. Using some installer (which
will end up putting a full interpreter and lots of other stuff in each
and every program) is one alternative; I think the two-step approach
of getting the interpreter and getting the program is more acceptable
in general.

[...]
>Then again, there could still be a single, full-blown, kitchen-sink archive
>for those who don't care and just want everything (myself included).

Yes. I wouldn't mind having one "thick" and one "thin"
Python-distribution. I mean, why would I care if someone wanted a
distribution with minimal functionality? Good for them. I just want to
be able to say to my users, "download the standard (fat) Python
distribution, and the program will work".

> My
>feeling is that, at this moment, it is very difficult to create a
>mini-distribution (because of all the interdependencies),

It has been done several times, for (among other things) embedded
devices etc.

> whereas it would
>be trivial to build a kitchen-sink distribution from the separate
>libraries.  Clearly it would require a lot of work up front to separate the
>current library into components, but it would be worth it in the long run.

Maybe. I definitely think making another (bigger) distribution would
be useful (as the batteries included PEP outlines).

>Regards,
>Cliff

--
Magnus Lie Hetland                                  The Anygui Project
http://hetland.org                                  http://anygui.org