Cheese Shop: some history for the new-comers

[Paul Boddie]

Fredrik Lundh 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.

Re-adding the missing disambiguating text:

"It would not occur to me that this referred to people who are
developing the language itself."

> 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 ?

Both people who develop with Python and people who develop Python
itself.

> (and why wouldn't the development process behind Python be
> of interest to you, btw?  don't tell me that you've never dis-
> covered a bug in Python or its documentation... ;-)

True. But take a look at these two examples for the confusion we're
seeing here:

http://www.postgresql.org/
http://www.trolltech.com/

The first site has a "Developers" link which tells you after you've
visited the linked page that they meant "developers of PostgreSQL" by
the term; the second site has a "Developer" link which provides
resources for people using the company's products to write solutions.

It's clear that people use the term "Python developer" similarly to
"Oracle developer", where you don't get many people in the wild
actually developing Oracle products themselves, and so the term has an
established meaning of someone developing with that technology. Thus,
many people, especially those accustomed to using more corporate
technologies like Oracle or Java would see "Developers" or "Developer"
links and think of stuff they can develop with, rather than finished
applications or solutions, for example; it certainly wouldn't occur to
them that the links would point to some internal Oracle portal strictly
for Oracle development staff, some Sun portal for Java development
staff, or tools for working on the Python implementation.

Paul