[Python-ideas] PEPs: Theory of operation

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Anders Hovmöller writes:

 > > If one doesn't know who the senior developers are yet, she should
 > > think twice about whether she's ready to PEP anything.  That's
 > > not a litmus test; some PEPs have eventually succeeded though the
 > > proponent was new to the project development process.[2]  But it's
 > > a lot less painful if you can tell who's likely to be able to
 > > sway the whole project one way or the other.
 > 
 > I think that entire paragraph made it sound even worse than what I
 > wrote originally. It reads to an outsider as “if you don’t know
 > what’s wrong I’m not going to tell you”.

"What's wrong" *with what*?  Nothing in that paragraph implies that
anything is wrong with anything.

I wrote that post for your benefit *among others* but it's not about
you.  It's about how Python development makes decisions about whether
to implement a proposal (specifically, PEPs) or not.  Understanding
how things work currently will help new contributors get their
proposals implemented, or at least understand why those proposals
weren't accepted.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about these
very basic processes, among a half-dozen or more newcomers who are
posting about governance.  I want to clear that up.  Personally, I
think Python governance is fine, but for those who don't, they should
at least understand what it *is* before they start proposing
modifications.

 > > And as a matter of improving your proposal, who surely does know
 > > more about what your proposal implies for the implementation than
 > > you do, so you should strongly consider whether *you* are the one
 > > who's missing something when you disagree with them.
 > 
 > Is this me specifically or “you” in the abstract? English isn’t
 > great here.

Nothing in that post is about you, it's just that your post triggered
mine, and a quote from your post was a convenient lead-in to a
discussion of several aspects of the PEP process (and more generally
the decision to implement a feature or not) that are pretty opaque to
most newcomers.

Regards,