Using Python for my web site

[Cliff Wells]

On Wed, 2006-08-02 at 10:46 -0300, Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
> On 2006-08-02 00:51:28, Conrad wrote:
> 
> > Which begins "A few years ago" 
> 
> Exactly. Isn't this a good start for honesty? It doesn't claim to state
> anything up to date.
> 
> It continues "I did some research", "some" being a very clear indicator
> that I didn't consider this a thorough research. From the stated results of
> this research it should be clear to any reasonable reader what kind of
> research that was. "Claimed to have", "seemed to have" are not really
> expressions that try to claim more than they are.

I think the communication breakdown here is two-fold:

1) PostgreSQL fans are perhaps a bit paranoid about claims of MySQL
being better.  There used to be a tiny bit of truth in this claim for
certain applications (mostly relating to performance and ease of use).
This makes them tend to read statements such as yours as an attack and
so you get defensive responses.  
Also, comparing MySQL to PostgreSQL is a bit like comparing PHP to
Python: not even in the same class. PostgreSQL users probably consider
the whole comparison is a bit insulting to begin with, then to suggest
that MySQL *might* be better is practically a slap in the face ;-)

2) When you qualify statements with modifiers such as "some", "seemed",
etc, you are almost bound to be misinterpreted, since those modifiers
are apparently invisible on the net.  I suspect most people scan
messages, taking away the main point but discarding all the nice words
the writer was so careful to write.
For future reference, if you don't know and intend to convey that you
don't, it's probably best to end your statement (no matter how carefully
qualified) with a clear statement that you are fishing for informative
responses.

For instance, were I to say (on this list):

"I've heard that Python is slow compared to PHP, and that many people
recommend PHP because it's hard to find hosting for Python apps
anyway.", I'd probably get a nice mix of both helpful replies and
extremely irritable ones, despite the fact I clearly qualified my
statements.  Both of those statements were at least somewhat true at one
point and as such tend to invoke more passionate responses from Python
proponents.  On the other hand, had I appended "So I'd like some other
opinions because I don't know." to the end, it would probably cut the
irritation down considerably (or at least be in a much more defensible
position if it didn't).

Regards,
Cliff

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