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“I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”

(mail.python.org)
2024 points randlet | 4 comments | 12 Jul 18 15:22 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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bla2 ◴[12 Jul 18 16:02 UTC] No.17515883[source]▶
> I don't ever want to have to fight so hard for a PEP and find that so many people despise my decisions.

Leading a large open source project must be terrible in this age of constant outrage :-(

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symmitchry ◴[12 Jul 18 16:11 UTC] No.17515972[source]▶
I'm a little confused though, by his feelings here. Why did he feel the need to "fight so hard for a PEP" if it was so controversial, and everyone was outraged?

I do understand people's points about "the age of outrage" and "internet 2018" but still: the PEP wasn't generally accepted as being a fantastic improvement, so why did he feel the need to fight so hard for it?

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jnwatson ◴[12 Jul 18 16:25 UTC] No.17516128[source]▶
It was controversial syntax, inline assignment-as-expression. There's always a tension between "keep it simple stupid" and "let's make it better", especially when a large user demographic of Python are non-professional-programmers.

Interestingly, C++ is going through the same process, with lots of great ideas being proposed, but the sum total of them being an even more complicated language (on top of what is probably the most complicated language already).

Python has been successful, IMHO, because Guido has made several brave, controversial calls. Python 3 breakage and async turned out to be prescient, fantastic decisions.

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coldtea[dead post] ◴[12 Jul 18 16:31 UTC] No.17516204[source]▶
>Python 3 breakage and async turned out to be prescient, fantastic decisions.

Async maybe. Python 3 breakage? Did you forgot the /s tag?

pvg ◴[12 Jul 18 16:54 UTC] No.17516452[source]▶
This is a particularly ill-chosen thread to deliberately try to re-flame this flamewar. Most threads are.
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1. Bahamut ◴[12 Jul 18 17:27 UTC] No.17516760[source]▶
To be fair, the person stating that Python 3 breakage was a fantastic decision probably should've avoided referring to that as such, as it almost certainly invites disagreement on a controversial topic.
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2. pvg ◴[12 Jul 18 17:49 UTC] No.17516974[source]▶
No, that's giving the flamemongers a flamer's veto. It's a perfectly sensible thing to mention when talking about the difficulties of leading the Python project and offering an opinion on how Guido van Rossum handled them. Picking out that one opinion and yelling little more than 'fite me' back at the person is not a perfectly sensible thing.
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3. Bahamut ◴[12 Jul 18 18:02 UTC] No.17517087[source]▶
Then if someone disagrees & an argument erupts, then that should not be surprising - that post is equally as culpable for igniting a well-discussed issue by posting something clearly so opinionated/leaning towards one side of an issue that at this point one should have known better than to even allow a conversation to digress in that direction if that person wants to avoid that discussion.

To ignore that is to straight up deny what can only be described as flamebait.

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4. pvg ◴[12 Jul 18 18:15 UTC] No.17517184{3}[source]▶
It is not flamebait to say 'I think so-and-so handled a difficult problem well', especially as part of larger point. It's flamy to respond 'u wat m8?'. It's not a complicated thing and there's no 'fairness' in treating these things as the same.