Cheese Shop: some history for the new-comers

[Peter Decker]

On 3/12/06, Fredrik Lundh <fredrik at pythonware.com> wrote:
> Peter Decker wrote:
>
> > I consider myself a Python developer, and if I saw a 'Developers' link
> > on a Python site, it would seem obvious that it would be something
> > that might interest me.
>
> even when it appeared below News, Documentation, Download,
> Community, and Links buttons on a site dedicated to the Python
> programming language ?
>
> who would you, intuitively, think that the other buttons were tar-
> geted for ?

I would expect 'Documentation' would lead to docs about *using*
Python, not about the nuts and bolts that go into enabling Python to
do its magic. Similarly, I would expect 'News' to be news that would
be relevant to the users of the language, 'Community' to be about the
community of people who use Python, etc.

The number of people who could potentially be Python developers is
immense compared to the number who will ever look at the source code
behind it, much less tinker with it.

> (and why wouldn't the development process behind Python be
> of interest to you, btw?

Probably because I have other work to do, and I use Python as the tool
to get that work done. If I were a baker, I would be preoccupied with
keeping my bakery in business; I wouldn't be spending much time
studying flour mills or wheat farming, even though those endeavors
make my bakery possible.

> don't tell me that you've never dis-
> covered a bug in Python or its documentation... ;-)

Can't say I've ever run into anything that hadn't already been
reported. But even if I did, my C skills are nowhere near good enough
to be able to delve into the source code and correct it. That doesn't
make me any less of a Python developer, though.

--

# p.d.