python-dev Summary for 2004-08-01 through 2004-08-15

[Arthur]

On Mon, 23 Aug 2004 21:50:48 -0700, Brett Cannon
<bac at OCF.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
>
>But then Guido decided to make my life difficult by saying that if the 
>community could come up with an agreed-upon alternative syntax to 
>propose to him he would consider ripping out the '@' syntax; decorators 
>have always been experimental and '@' was checked in so people had 
>*something* to play with.  This meant everyone and their mother started 
>to propose both new and old syntaxes for decorators.  This led to a 
>record amount of email on python-dev (at least compared to what we have 
>archives for; back to April 1999).

<SNIP>

>"In the old days, Guido would Pronounce, and we'd all bite our tongues 
>(although not necessarily each his own).  The less time Guido can make 
>for Python, the more important becomes graceful capitulation."  Tim said 
>this and it makes me wish for the old days.  People had *months* to 
>comment on decorators and no one spoke up until something went into the 
>language.  Procrastination is not a virtue when it comes to major 
>language evolution discussions.  What was worse was when the emails 
>started repeating themselves (which was pretty much from the get-go when 
>this exploded).  Seemed like people decided to start talking without 
>doing some research.  Granted the PEP was outdated and the wiki page was 
>not up yet, but this stuff was covered in the Summaries before and you 
>could have just Googled for the previous threads.

Perhaps you could clarify your position a bit.  I think the
"community" understands some fundamental difference between posting to
python-dev and to python-list.  If not Aahz is normally there to
remind them.

Guido's "genius" extends to marketing, IMO.

Having some sense of participation in the fate of Python, even if bit
hullicinatory, is fundamental to the development of its following.  A
clasic form of guerilla marketing.  Considering that the Python
markteing budget in $ is 0, I think it would be a mistake to have the
community believe that their only role is to read the release notes.

>
>Personally, if I was Guido, I would have said that the community had 
>their chance to speak up and they just didn't take it. 

I think you are inadvertently going somewhere dangerous here.  A
significant part of the community finds that their first appropriate
opportunity to comment to be after some initial decision at python-dev
- the Senate.  It then goes to the People. We the rowdy poeple then do
our rowdy thing.

You see the point...

I don't think you want to say to the People, either to crash the
Senate floor, or hold their peace,

Art