Vectors in Visual Python

[Arthur]

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 09:59:41 +0100, aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
wrote:

>Arthur <ajsiegel at optonline.com> wrote:
>
>> thinking that the visciousness with wihich you were attacking someone
>> suggesting a proposal for an optional feature - even if an iill
>> adivised proposal for and ill advised optional feature (I frankly
>> don't care much about that part of the discussion one way or another)
>
>While in my case it's essentially ALL that I care about in this
>discussion: the technical aspects of Python.

Then *only * talk about the technical aspects of Python,  Is my, or
anybody else's stupidity, a technical aspect of Python?
>
>> - was unwarranted, and more importantly *unwise* for someone in a
>
>If, like you, I didn't care about the technical aspects of Python, it
>sure would be unwise to get upset -- I could let the language go to hell
>in a handbasket, as long as I made sure I looked good myself.

Save your fire for real threats - was the exact point I was trying to
make.

Is the questionaing of a newbie on a list Guido doesn't even read a
threat to the fate of Python - technical or otherwise.  Not in the
slightest, tiniest way . What is much more a threat to Python is an
inhospitable, dogmatic.and intimidating community ethos.

Let's not get to Altamont  before we need to.

>
>Caring deeply and passionately about something greater than oneself,
>particularly something which may seem dry and abstract to those who
>don't care a whit for it, might no doubt be deemed intrinsically unwise
>-- and yet, there is much to be said for such passion.  Without the
>ability to get passionate and inflamed, we might perhaps be wiser, but
>we'd be Vulcans, not humans.  Moreover, unless some of us felt such
>passion for certain technical issues, you guys who don't care would not
>get the benefits of the time and energy we freely devote to them -- so
>it's unwise, even from a strictly selfish viewpoint, to try to turn us
>firebrands into such coolly calculating Vulcans.

I appreciate your books indeed,Alex.  They are calm .I'm a customer. I
can study expositions. Not rants.

>
>> postion of community leadership - considering past, recent, and
>> undoubtedly future issues that have and will arise. 
>> 
>> What don't *you* understand about that??
>
>Could you _really_ believe, considering the many years of consistent
>history of my posts on this group, that by reviving the issue you could
>get *any* other effect but fanning the flames all over again?  THAT is
>what I don't understand: whether you're doing that _deliberately_, or
>out of almost-unbelievable levels of cluelessness.

What issue was being "revived"?  There was no issue there being
discussed that is on the table in any serious way.  In that sense it
was a harmless discussion, inititated by someone new to Python, and in
the almost inevitable why this? why that? exploratory assessment
stage.  I think you were candid enough to admit you had had such a
stage yourself. 

Being hardcoded less into any alternative view of the universe when
coming to Python  - i.e. ignorant - I faced much less of this.
Knowing little, I had a very smalll unlearning curve.

My struggle has been almost the opposite - and my lament has not been
why this?, why that?  - but why change this? and why change that?

>
>> We all have are own kinds of stupidities, it seems to me.
>
>This is no doubt the case.  For example, many of us instinctively brake
>and swerve when a small animal jumps into the road in front of the car
>they're driving, seriously endangering themselves and the passengers
>thereby.  If we were presented the issue in a context giving us time to
>reflect and react rationally -- "To how much danger to life and limb
>would you subject yourself, your wife, and your children, to increase
>the likelihood of survival for some stupid cat who can't wait to cross
>the road?" -- we'd probably react quite differently.  And yet, while it
>IS objectively stupid to behave that way, it _is_ one of the stupidities
>that make us human.

If that is your way of admitting perhaps some human overreaction -
attacking as a threat something that rationally is or was not - its
appreciated that you are able to do so.

>
>A _deliberate_ and consistent preference can be disagreed with, but it's
>pretty pointless to call it "stupid" or "unwise"; there is just no
>accounting for tastes.  If you _prefer_ the flame about declarations to
>continue for its own sake (or because you believe it makes you look
>good, whatever), while not caring about its contents, I may consider
>that evil and hateful, but it's neither intelligent nor stupid _per se_.
>If your preferences are otherwise, and yet your behavior is easily seen
>to be such as to have that effect, then THIS is indeed very stupid.


When Guido started thinking out loud about optional static typing he
came under attack most specifcally with the argument that optional
static typing will be technically optional, but in practice will
become mandatory and will therefore fundamentally change Python and
its culture.  

I tried to make the argument that a proposed "optional" feature should
at least find its own range of rhetorical excess, as compared to other
kinds of discussions of possible language design decisions, partly
with that discussion resonating in the background. 

You respnd by pontificating about how the world works.  My instinct is
to go toe-to-toe with you or anybody else on the subject of how the
world works - maybe having a little more time to spend on the subject
in the last 53 years, having spent *less* time on the subject of how
Python works.

We are in a strange culture in Pythonland.  He who knows the most
about Python internals knows all.  A little bizarre.  If Pythonl;and
is to be an innovative  - or even intersting place - it needs, IMO, to
get past this kind of adolescence.

Art