[Python-ideas] Inconsistencies (was: Shuffled)

[Nick Coghlan]

On 10 September 2016 at 22:09, Sven R. Kunze <srkunze at mail.de> wrote:
> Is going deep really necessary at all?
>
> People program for different reasons, to have fun, to create value for
> others, to educate, or for reasons we both cannot even think of. Why should
> they leave their level? Because of you or me? Because they need to know what
> Turing-completeness means? What calling conventions are? I don't think so.
> They wanna solve problems and get things done whether or not they know every
> single bit of the language they use. If they decide to go deeper, that's
> wonderful, but if they don't, don't force them.

If people don't want to actively learn about the enormous complexities
of real world programming language design, then they need to be
willing to defer to those that have put in that time and effort.
Deliberately choosing to argue from a position of wilful ignorance is
disrespectful of everyone else's time and attention, and has no place
on python-ideas or python-dev.

It's fine for newcomers not to understand those complexities yet -
many of these problems don't have obvious answers, and explaining them
to someone else is a great way to better formulate them in our own
minds (hence the martial arts maxim: "If you want to learn, teach").

However, it's utterly unacceptable to refuse to acknowledge "It's more
complicated than you currently realise" as a reasonable answer,
especially when that answer is accompanied by explanations of some of
those complexities. If folks aren't willing to adhere to those terms
of participation, they can save themselves and everyone else a lot of
irritation by unsubscribing voluntarily, rather than waiting until
they annoy other list participants enough to earn a suspension of
their posting privileges (and potentially even a permanent ban if
they're persistent enough, although that step has only had to happen
once to date).

Regards,
Nick.

P.S. If folks want to vent about the arrogance and intransigence of
the Python core development team because we collectively disagree with
them about something, they have the entire rest of the internet to do
that without interfering with the collaborative process.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia