Python Evangelism

[Tim Churches]

Benny wrote:
> Paul Boddie wrote:
> 
>> Bizarre names may be cute (to some people) but they don't lend
>> themselves to guessing or searching. Consequently, people who want
>> answers yesterday aren't likely to be amused to eventually discover
>> that the name of the resource they've been looking for is some opaque,
>> three-levels-of-indirection-via-irony, in-crowd joke. And even acronyms
>> like CPAN are better than wacky names, anyway.
> 
> To emphasize the point as a newbie: I know what CPAN is. I would go to 
> the Vaults of Parnassus for Python stuff. But Cheese Shop?

I like the irony of the name Cheese Shop, but I do think that there is a
problem with "Shop", as it typically means a place where you buy things
for money. However, the vast majority of the cheesy comestibles at the
Cheese Shop are available for free. In fact, of 1287 packages currently
listed there, only 7 have non-free or proprietary licenses. Actually, it
was the "National Cheese Emporium" in the original sketch, although Mr
Wensleydale does describe it as a cheese shop - but both "shop" and
"emporium" are used to describe places of commerce. On re-acquaintance,
the sketch itself is still very funny after all these years, except
perhaps for the ending, in which Mousebender shoots dead Mr Wensleydale
for deliberately wasting his time. In the early 1970s in Britain, when
shooters were possessed by a very small minority of blaggards, that
might have been funny, but in the early 21st century, I find it grates a
little (no pun intended) - I can imagine the same fate befalling a
latter-day Wensleydale in a different country who happens to be fresh
out of meira. But I am sure ESR would defend Mousebender's right to blow
poor Wensleydale away - see http://www.catb.org/~esr/guns/gun-ethics.html .

So is there an alternative Monty Python sketch which has a theme of
purveyance as opposed to commerce? None spring to mind.

Tim C