Cult-like behaviour [was Re: Kindness]

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info>:

> On Sun, 15 Jul 2018 11:39:40 +0300, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
> Armin seems to be implying that Unix is (1) the only OS in the world,
> and (2) beyond criticism.

If Unix is your world, of course you can criticize how badly Python3
performs in that world.

> Neither of these are correct. Windows users might rightly ask why
> Armin cares what Unix does.

Huh? Windows users should judge Python3 from their point of view and
leave Armin and Unix alone.

> Unix does a lot right, but not everything

So we agree that Python3 is not a good fit for Unix/Linux/OSX/POSIX (or
vice versa)?

Too bad because Python2 fit like a glove.

> http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf
>
> and its "everything is bytes" stance is badly wrong when it comes to
> user- visible textual elements like file names and the command prompt.
> We write `less README`, not `6c7320524541444d45`, and we should stop
> pretending that we're using bytes just because the underlying
> infrastructure uses bytes. We're using text.

One of the classic Unix and Internet tenets is that text is bytes is
text. Of course, much of it was naïve, but UTF-8 has miraculously given
it a new life.

Now, Python3's Unicode folly has spread to wider circles. Guile, GNU
Textutils and glibc have been afflicted by the same mal-meme.

> If you had read the link I gave, or even if you copied and pasted the
> URL into any reasonably modern browser, you might have learned that it
> is a valid URL.
>
> [...]
>
> Indeed. Is there a reason why these shouldn't be considered serious
> bugs in the http library?

Oh, that would be some development, indeed. Browsers' behavior is hardly
relevent here but that you'd be ready to throw Python3's http.client
under the bus...

So do you think http.client is abusing Python3's data types?


Marko