python programming help

[rurpy at yahoo.com]

On 12/09/2013 01:15 AM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 4:10 PM,  <rurpy at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> We all use buggy software every day.  *Every* piece of non-trival
>> software is buggy -- you already know that.  So you are saying
>> that bugs that annoy *you* are ones that *others* should change
>> their practice to join your boycott to fix.
> 
> The ones that have interoperability problems are the ones that need to
> be fixed. [...snip stuff about mud clients...])

Huh?  You declare a universal truth that interoperability bugs 
need to be fixed but other bugs don't?  A bug that give wrong 
financial results is less important than mojibake sometimes
displayed on a web page?  A bug that cause a connection failure 
is more important than a bug that silently corrupts saved data?
Congratulations, you just won this week's jmf prize (with apologies
to jmf.)

>> You sound like some Unix hard-asses of the 1990's who, by god, weren't
>> going pollute their software with any kind of MS Windows compatibility.
>> No supporting a broken OS for them.  They would keep the software pure
>> and Unix-only and force Microsoft to fix their broken OS.
>> Well, most of that software and those programmers have been eliminated
>> by Darwinian selection, and today cross-platform (or Windows only)
>> software is the norm.
> 
> And there were Microsoft people in the same era who, by Bill, weren't
> going to pollute their software with any kind of standards
> compatibility. 

I don't think that is analogous in the same way. 
 
Unlike most people here, who seem to be driven by an personal
(and emotional judging from the language used) distaste for 
GG posts, and a similar emotional response against MS by the 
Unix elitists in the 1990s, Microsoft's alleged "embrace, 
extend, extinguish" policy was/is (I'm pretty sure) carefully 
thought out and based on rational analysis.

> Let's look at just one product, Internet Explorer:
[...snip MSIE version history claiming decreasing market share 
and increasing standards compliance...]

Not a convincing example at all.  First its not even clear that 
what the factors driving such change are; open standards are only 
one factor.  Not should you assume that all open standards are 
equally important and that MS' (or Google's) response will be 
the same to all standards across all product lines.

Two, although you present MSIE as changing in response to demands
to "match [other browsers] in behaviour" you leave out demands on
those other browsers (and standards) to adopt features of MSIE.  
A unfortunate example might be the W3C consideration (maybe approved 
by now?) of DRM.  It is not a one-way street and standards are 
not cast in stone.

Finally it is an absurd stretch to take pressure applied by large 
corporate customers to MS to adopt more open standards as comparable
to a handful of people in a non-major programming language mailing
list refusing to read posts from GG.

I am not saying that you shouldn't continue to promote your boycott
against Google, just that you shouldn't be surprised or get angry
when the response of some people is similar to my response towards
some friends who want me to stop eating meat to fight factory farming.

> Windows-only is hardly the norm. There's at least as much software
> that's Mac-only or Linux-only as Windows-only.

As much Mac-only software as Windows-only? Possibly, but I doubt 
it although I acknowledge things are moving in that direction. 
As much Linux-only software as Windows-only?  You must be smoking
crack. :-)

> And far far more that's
> cross-platform or at least multi-platform. The most important thing is
> interoperability - sometimes that means stuff like Samba (specifically
> written to talk to a "foreign" system), but more often it means coding
> to the pre-written standards. I can write all sorts of TELNET servers
> and clients, and I can be confident that they'll work nicely with
> other people's clients and servers, and that they'll understand each
> other when they say IAC DO NAWS or IAC SB TERMTYPE IS "Gypsum" IAC SE.
> If one of them is buggy, it must be fixed, or it must not be used.

TELNET?  Does any one still use that except perhaps on secure, 
controlled legacy intranets?  We nuked that and other protocols 
of it's era (FTP etc) for ssh and other (more) secure protocols 
ages ago.