[Idle-dev] /me waves

[Kevin Walzer]

Hi Katie,

On 3/21/13 10:37 AM, Katie Cunningham wrote:
> It pointed to this list, telling me to join up. Here's the text in full:
>
> Too bad people exaggerate like hell -- especially in blog posts ;-).
>
> I use IDLE almost daily and it works for me, especially with some of
> the more recent fixes. I have worked on IDLE issues on and off for
> over a year. But I have no idea what *you* think is 'broken as hell'.
>
> Given your experience teaching with IDLE, I would be very interested
> in knowing what you think are the top 3 or so outstanding issues. As
> well as here, you could also post to the idle-dev list,
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/idle-dev, which is mirrored as
> gmane.org newsgroup gmane.comp.python.idle.
>
> You did not specify which Python version you used, but since 3.3.0
> there have been about 30 patches pushed.  I hope to see than many
> again in not too many months. You are welcome to join us to help make
> that happen.

I can't speak for the list, but I'll offer my own two cents.

I realize that this comment, coming after your enthusiastic discussion 
of your experience teaching kids at PyCON (what a wonderful thing! good 
for you!), comes on a sour note. But I'm not quite clear on what in this 
post constitutes bad behavior, unless it's the mildly sarcastic opening 
sentence (which echoes your own phrasing).

The poster, Terry Reedy (who, I believe, is one of the regular IDLE 
developers, and thus might take comments that IDLE is "broken as hell" 
more to heart than most would) disagrees with your characterization, 
asking you for examples of what you think is broken in IDLE (since your 
blog post didn't offer any), notes that work is ongoing on IDLE and a 
lot of bug fixes have been committed, and concludes with a polite 
invitation to join the IDLE list and contribute.

There's been a lot of talk on Twitter and in the blogosphere in recent 
weeks about examples of overly aggressive, hostile, and even 
misogynistic comments by some male developers to female developers. Such 
behavior has no place in the developer world and needs to be called out 
for the bullshit that it is.  But the comment under discussion doesn't 
strike me as an example of it. (I realize you didn't make an explicit 
reference to this broader context, but your reference to the commenter 
being a "jerk" made me wonder. If I'm misreading you here, please accept 
my apologies in advance.)

I hope you decide to stick around and join the list, and also contribute 
some code. In general the discussions here are very cordial, and it's a 
supportive community. And those of us who use IDLE (and occasionally 
contribute patches, etc.) would certainly welcome the help!

Best,
Kevin

-- 
Kevin Walzer
Code by Kevin/Mobile Code by Kevin
http://www.codebykevin.com
http://www.wtmobilesoftware.com