Contributor's List

[Alex Martelli]

<grahamd at dscpl.com.au> wrote:
   ...
> Is this mean't to only cover additional entries which were added in
> the 2nd edition, or is it also mean't to encompass entries which were
> carried over from the 1st edition as well.

The latter: it covers all entries.

> If it is both, then the editing must have been quite cut throat as I

It was indeed.  Fewer than half of the recipes in the 2nd edition are
"carried over" (with heavy edits in all cases) from the first.

> dropped from 3 entries in the 1st edition to 0 in the 2nd edition.

True, alas: your three recipes in the Distributed Processing chapter
were dropped.  Not light-heartedly, believe me.


> I can sort of understand if the intent was to get rid of entries which

It was of course not my intent to *GET RID* of anything whatsoever: I
selected all the recipes for the 1st edition, just as for the 2nd one,
and would dearly have loved to keep each and every one of them (I
wouldn't have selected them in the first place if I didn't like them).

The INTENT was to add over a couple hundred new and (I do believe)
wonderful recipes; the CONSTRAINT was that I couldn't just blithely
double the book's size.  So, the only way to make space for the new was
to ruthlessly cut much of the old, in order to limit the book's size
within reasonable boundaries.

> referenced packages which weren't regarded as mainstream. I guess
> it is only 14 years of work down the drain. ;-(

I wish you wouldn't look on it that way.  The Python Cookbook is not
intended as a validation or invalidation of any particular piece of
software -- just, if you will, as a reflection of how widespread the
current interest on it is.  Consider: _my_ own lovechild
"non-mainstream" package is gmpy, OK?  Well, I didn't put even ONE
recipe about it in either edition nor on the online Cookbook -- nor did
anybody else post recipes using it to the Cookbook, validating my belief
that it's too specialized to cover in the book.  I don't consider this
means "years of work down the drain": gmpy scratches the itch I made it
for, and occasional references to others using it are just a little
extra bonus, even if they do make my heart give a little jump of joy
each time I see one.

I think that's the spirit in which to do open-source development...


Alex