GUIs - A Modest Proposal

[Stephen Hansen]

>
> However as i have mentioned before there will NEVER be a crowd of us
> marching in the streets behind one GUI. People are just too busy to
> get involved. This has to be an executive decision. The powers that be
> must make the change themselves or it will never happen -- i can
> guarantee that! And if this change is made python will be better off
> in the end. You have my vote for change but unless someone with more
> influence steps up then our laments will be but in vain.
>
> psst, hey Guido, it's time to make your triumphant comeback to c.l.p.
> We are waiting...
>

Um.

And even if the Powers that Be made an executive decision-- how would that
impact anything? Hint: it wouldn't.

Guido does not have some magical ability to point, declare, and suddenly
there's time and effort expended to achieve an event. He doesn't have a
budget. He doesn't have a pool of Work Units that he can assign to a certain
task and then Minions who will go and fulfill it.

He really doesn't. If you think any of his "decisions" can result in work
being done, you're sort of entirely missing how Python has always been
developed. People donate their motivation, time and effort, to tasks. Stuff
gets done, and included in Python, when people on their own decide to
champion a feature, task, or function, if they find the feature interesting,
useful, and worth their time and effort. They do the work first. Then, Guido
lets it in or not. Usually, to avoid a lot of wasted work, they hash out a
PEP first. Then they can get it approved and then do the big effort of
implementing it (although they usually have to be motivated enough to do a
reference implementation anyways-- because a PEP for a code-change without
any code, has very little to no chance of being entered into Python unless
someone else stands up during the process and -- entirely on their own
motivation -- decides to do work).

Sure, for certain limited sorts of decisions, he can say 'We should do X!',
and there's some people who will see that X is done, if they thought it was
a good idea, were bored(from the tone of python-dev, I doubt many of them
are ever very bored. Extremely lacking in time is the more common theme), or
it wasn't to terribly involved. But usually only in terms of a larger
project or area of concern that they either consider important to
themselves, or interesting, or that they have claimed.

Python's "core team", -- isn't directed by Guido. They don't work on what
Guido tells them to work on. They're a bunch of volunteers who do things
they want to, under the nominal approval of the BDFL, but generally with the
mutual-supervision and cooperation of the other volunteers.

The only work Guido can make happen in Python is his own time Google gives
him to work on Python: and he's flat out said in the past that he hasn't
ever had any need to build a GUI app, and has no real desire to. He doesn't
know the first thing about GUI programming.

So... what's all this mean?

There are no Powers that Be.

There is a pool of exactly zero to very very small "core" development
team(using the word 'core' very vaguely, meaning primarily, 'people who do
stuff sometimes on python-dev') of Python who are knowledgeable of the state
of the art and/or interested enough in the very idea of a brand new cross
platform Pythonic GUI.

I know one of at least is interested enough to put his money where his mouth
is and has worked on implementing something as such -- PyGUI. I think,
personally, that its about the only hope you have of ever getting a
Tkinter-replacement in. No one else seems willing to do the work. Until
someone does, its just dead on arrival. The entire idea.

Unless you want to add your chips to the pile, and *do* the work, its just a
pointless conversation. Because it won't happen. Python's not a company. It
doesn't have resources that Guido can direct to tasks and see that said
tasks get done. Its volunteers, doing what they care about, under the very
vague moderation of a Benevolent Dictator.

Me? I'm entirely happy with wxPython. I need to do rich, complex
cross-platform app's which look and behave natively. For that, I need
something on the caliber and completeness of wx and qt. Any 'simple'
pythonic UI just won't cut it.

--S
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