[Pythonmac-SIG] a beginner's list

[Ronald Oussoren]

On 9-feb-2006, at 4:13, Kevin Ollivier wrote:
>>
>> The difference is that if I didn't know better, I'd get really
>> pissed off if I upgraded my OS and all of my very important work
>> stuff breaks and makes me waste a day tracking down what needs to
>> be fixed.  That's not what an OS upgrade is supposed to do.  It
>> doesn't do that for anything except applications that depend on
>> moving targets like the system's Python or Perl interpreter.
>
> I'd get really pissed off if I didn't know better and things stopped
> working regardless of how I upgraded Python. You'd consider whose
> Python broke your stuff into your decision to get upset?
>
> All Apple is doing is including Python with their OS, and
> occasionally updating it. That these updates can cause not-so-
> pleasant things to happen due to how Python works is not Apple's
> fault. A lot of the speech on here practically accuses Apple of
> causing the problem and it's really not fair.

I'm pretty sure Bob isn't accusing Apple of anything, but keeps
trying to hammer down the point that relying on Apple's Python
framework for end-user applications is not a smart thing.

I'd be very upset if some random GUI program stopped working after
an OS upgrade.  If the program is any good end-users shouldn't have
to know the language it is programmed in.

BTW. This doesn't mean you should never use the system version of
python. If you control the OS version (such as with in-house
deployments) or the user knows the program integrates with the
system version of python (a Python IDE or other power-tools) you
might as well use the system python. The same goes for pure python
scripts, python is much nicer than shell-scripts for a lot of
systems-management stuff.

Ronald



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