[Tutor] [OT] Cool vim feature

DL Neil PyTutor at danceswithmice.info
Fri May 1 17:01:20 EDT 2020


On 30/04/20 8:02 AM, Mats Wichmann wrote:
> On 4/29/20 1:38 PM, DL Neil via Tutor wrote:
> 
>>> probably don't have a lot of incentive to keep exploring new stuff... at
>>> least that's been the case for me, I've discovered new stuff quite
>>> slowly.
>> Are Release Notes largely treated in the same manner as License Agreements?
>> (that's a bit long, I'm not going to read that/will come back to it later?)
> 
> In my case, I get updates through a package manager... dnf or apt on
> Linux, and chocolatey on Windows.  So new versions "just install", I
> would have to go looking for release notes, and if there's not a reason
> you know you need to, why?

Apologies for going 'all sociological' on you.


This thread evidences a very good reason! ("should" cf "need")

One assumes that security-matters aside, package-maintainers have made 
changes for good reason, eg an extension to facilities. If we don't read 
the docs, we miss-out on potential advantage.

A disadvantage? Any changing of default values or actions may cause 
existing applications to 'break' - and likely in a reasonably illogical 
fashion and thus be difficult to track-down and debug.

In an environment where systems are critical, 'changes' may not be made 
without first verifying their effects - parallel environments, 
'sand-boxes' etc. Many use venvs to achieve something similar, I use VMs.

Like yourself, I tend to wait for Fedora-Linux to update their repo 
before I think about upgrading my Python(s). Even then, I do not tend to 
upgrade immediately, but to schedule a 'project' - and then, yes, read 
the docs (can you just see the virtue shining from my eyes and the halo 
surrounding my skull?), and to 'have a play' with the new features - see 
also question about 'walrus operator' I tossed into another thread, 
elsewhere (I hadn't (and still haven't) had time to experiment with it - 
yet!).

Of course, there are exceptions. When some new feature is a 'must have', 
then 'the rules' change - but on a very consistent basis, please understand!
-- 
Regards =dn


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