Does the Python community really follow the philospy of "Community Matters?"

[Stephen Hansen]

On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 12:38 AM, r <rt8396 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Jan 30, 2:26 am, John Machin <sjmac... at lexicon.net> wrote:
> [snip]
> > This doesn't appear to match the description. Perhaps the PSU has
> > subverted my comp)(*&^%$#@!
> > NO CARRIER
>
> Oops -- Good catch John,
> Even perfect people like myself make mistakes :). Here is the
> aforementioned thread where a Python user was chastised for daring to
> say Python has a clearer syntax than Perl thereby easing
> maintainability: OH NO! *big hand wave*
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/b1214df115ac01ce/c7cfe1fa9634cc2a?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=perl+bashing#c7cfe1fa9634cc2a
>
> These Perl mongers have no business doing their mongling here, go to
> c.l.Perl!


He was not chastised, nor threatened as you previously said; he was welcomed
to Python in all of its awesomeness, and given a pointer about community
etiquette.

"excessive Perl bashing" ... "considered tasteless" ... Come on. That's so
mild of a warning that you can barely call it that. Considering the comment
after "the occasional snide comment should be fine :-)" complete with a
smiley even should make it very clear that a simple and *friendly* pointer
on getting along in a new community was given.

It was great advice, too. No one has a problem with talking about Python's
strengths, or how good Python has worked for them; or even comparing it to
other languages in a reasoned way (though those conversations have all been
had ten thousand years ago)... its the vitriolic bashing of other languages
that isn't wanted because there's no point to it at all. It does nothing at
all but make us look like mongers, zealots, and childish to boot.

Advocating the language is a great thing to do. Evangelizing it makes us
look like idiots.

You catch grief because your evangelization of the language is *so*
completely over the top that it comes off almost as trollish-- the
reverse-troll technique is not all that uncommon. Like with
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/b8a079b8b780be19 -- and
the talk of throwing off shackles and embracing the Freedom That Python
Gives You. Its so completely excessive that it can't even be taken
seriously.

You ask if community matters to Python? It does, absolutely. I just don't
think you understand that community. Its there. Its full of tons of people
in many walks of life who use Python to get things done, and who absolutely
love doing so -- its full of people who use the language and the tools it
provides to accomplish real things easier, faster (to accomplish a goal, not
to execute a chunk of code) and without sacrificing long-term
maintainability. My impression of the community is simply that its a more
quiet one: advocacy instead of evangelism.

I'd rather talk about how to accomplish something in a Pythonic way, or how
to help use Python to solve your problems in a way that is natural to do in
Python -- and convert you that way, then to worry about a "war with Ruby"
and such nonsense. Personally, I love Python. I wouldn't take a job writing
in either Perl or Ruby: but those who like that language are welcome to it.

Personally, I work for a division in our company that has converted over the
last few years our entire software line from an old, Windows-only mix of C
and VCL-stuff, to a serious mid-sized product which recently clocked in at
about 165k lines of Python code (about 600k more in third party libs!)
that's fast, effective, flexible, multi-platform and highly responsive to
our customer's evolving needs. We actually did a complete rewrite from the
ground up -- a dangerous thing to do, but the legacy product was so out of
date that it had to be done... and I don't think any other set of tools
would have been able to let us do so as well, in as short of a period of
time, or as iteratively and in cooperation with our customer base.

I have tons of positive things to say about Python: lots of people in The
Community do. And we've all worked with other languages and have reasons why
we don't like those tools, and people are fine to share those reasons. But
that's a different thing then flinging bile and ranting about how horrible
Language-X is or how Perfect-For-All-Things Python is.

--Stephen

P.S. Sorry for waxing verbosely.
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