[Pythonmac-SIG] My stab at a new page

[Bob Ippolito]

On Feb 9, 2006, at 12:38 PM, Bill Janssen wrote:

>> Python does not currently have an official Mac maintainer.
>
> Bingo!  And no one has stepped up to document the amazing torrent of
> productive activity since Jack "retired".  As a result, the useful
> pieces are scattered all over, the official documentation is wildly
> out of date, and there's not even a useful web page for MacPython.
>
> Add to this the fact that the pre-installed Python is widely held to
> be useless by well-respected and influential members of the community.
> A parochial and self-defeating assessment, I think.

It is useless to me.  I can't build redistributable applications with  
it, and it has VM bugs that cause some of my programs to crash  
without reason.  It's a support nightmare because it's different for  
every release of OS X.  10.3 has 2.3.0 with just CoreGraphics, 10.4  
has 2.3.5 with wx, CoreGraphics and tkinter, who knows what 10.5 will  
have.  If we tell everyone to use a particular 2.4.2 release then we  
don't have to deal with any of that nonsense.

It's also showing its age -- some software packages are starting to  
require or strongly recommend Python 2.4 for usage (e.g. TurboGears).

The minimal effort it takes to use a third party installation of  
Python is well worth it, and it becomes more useful as time goes on.   
Doubly so now that Leopard is approaching, because users can upgrade  
without losing all of their Python work to major version upgrade death.

It's great and convenient that Apple ships a Python interpreter, but  
it's only useful for running a subset of UNIX based Python  
applications and scripts.  I don't think it should even be a  
consideration for people writing software with Python.

> By the way, is anyone a designated point-man to work with Apple on the
> release it packages for the next OS?  Is there anyone from Apple even
> on this list?

I don't know if anyone in Cupertino is on this list, but I have  
contacts at Apple.  I was more or less the point person for the last  
release.

>> Clearly the current distribution and the people responsible for it
>> aren't going very far to serve newbies...
>
> It's worse than that, IMO.
>
> I've got a great deal of respect and appreciation for those, like Bob
> and Ronald, working hard on advancing the technology pieces.  Great
> work, just what we all need!  But unless there's some effective
> delivery vehicle for getting that work to the customer, much of it
> will be wasted.

It's not a waste because the work done helps me accomplish what I  
need to do.  I do it because I need it to be done, not because I want  
to help people.  I do a lot of things to help people, but that's  
rarely ever my primary motivation in the context of open source.

There's an open invitation for someone to coddle new users and  
maintain a straightforward web presence.  We all know that it would  
be beneficial, and it's time for someone to step up and do it  
already.  It's been discussed ad nauseam for the past few years, but  
talking apparently doesn't make anything happen.

-bob