Leave the putdowns in the Perl community, the Python world does not need them

[metaperl]

I was shocked to see the personal insults hurled in this thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/d0758cb9545cad4b

I have been very pleased with Python developers regardless of skill
levels in both the IRC channel as well as here - no hot attitudes. No
holier than thou put ons. I was just sinking into the comradery and
cooperative nature of this new powerful community when I saw that
thread.

Well, I hope that the fact that 99% of the Python community, from Guido
von Rossum on down continues to exemplify how a language can be good
and the people can be friendly and that the other 1% get inspired by
their positivity and switch as well...

 

[Steven Bethard]

I was shocked to see the personal insults hurled in this thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/d0758cb9545cad4b

I see that this is a Fredrik Lundh thread. I've felt the same way
before, but Fredrik has been around a long time[1] and if you listen
through the sometimes sharp words, he really has a lot of intelligent
things to say. All I can advise is that if you feel like Fredrik is
getting under your skin, take a deep breath and read a different thread
for a while. I promise you, it's worth it!

STeVe

[1] He's the author of Python's unicode support and Python 2.5's
elementtree module.

 

[John Machin]

I was shocked to see the personal insults hurled in this thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/d0758cb9545cad4b

I see that this is a Fredrik Lundh thread. I've felt the same way
before, but Fredrik has been around a long time[1] and if you listen [snip]

[1] He's the author of Python's unicode support and Python 2.5's
elementtree module.

and a very serious upgrade of the re kit plus PIL plus a book .... and
BTW: insult? OP, look at the TV news; if insult's the worst that
happens to you, burn some joss and be very grateful

 

[rdsteph]

Metaperl,

Steve makes a good point. Fredrik is one of the most important
contributors of Python code, tools, etc and as far as I am concerned,
that is so important that it gives him the right to be cranky from tiem
to time.

If somebody like me were to get cranky and negative, on the other hand,
that would be unacceptable.

Actual production of useful code is of paramount importance ;-))

Ron Stephens

 

[Steve Holden]

I was shocked to see the personal insults hurled in this thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/d0758cb9545cad4b

I see that this is a Fredrik Lundh thread. I've felt the same way
before, but Fredrik has been around a long time[1] and if you listen
through the sometimes sharp words, he really has a lot of intelligent
things to say. All I can advise is that if you feel like Fredrik is
getting under your skin, take a deep breath and read a different thread
for a while. I promise you, it's worth it!

Yup, if the effbot says you are wrong it would be sensible to at least
consider the possibility. But nobody can *force* you to read what it says.

regards
Steve

 

[Timothy Grant]

Metaperl,

Steve makes a good point. Fredrik is one of the most important
contributors of Python code, tools, etc and as far as I am concerned,
that is so important that it gives him the right to be cranky from tiem
to time.

If somebody like me were to get cranky and negative, on the other hand,
that would be unacceptable.

Actual production of useful code is of paramount importance ;-))

Ron Stephens

I just checked google groups and my first post to this newsgroup was
back in April of 98. I'd been lurking for likely a year prior to that.

That little bit of introduction is simply to say something I'm sure
Fredrik will hate to hear....

He's mellowed over the years.

Steve is 100% correct, if Fredrik says your wrong (even if he says it
not very nicely) You ought to stop and reconsider your opinion.

 

[John Salerno]

[1] He's the author of Python's unicode support and Python 2.5's
elementtree module.

Is that all?

He also implemented the partition string method, which for some reason I
think is the coolest thing since sliced lists.

 

[Magnus Lycka]

Steve makes a good point. Fredrik is one of the most important
contributors of Python code, tools, etc and as far as I am concerned,
that is so important that it gives him the right to be cranky from tiem
to time.

Since February last year I've had the opportunity to write most of
my code in Python, in a very cool company with lots of bright people.
When I asked why they started to use Python here, it turned out that
a course held by a certain Fredrik Lundh was something of a turning
point... It seems that made them see the light.

I'm very thankful for that!

(As I understood it, the reason for the Python course, was actually
that some third party product used Python. I'm pretty sure we don't
use that product any longer, but we certainly kept Python.)

Today, we actually hold Python courses ourselves, for customers from
all over the globe (mainly big airlines).

In my opinion, the most important aspect of contributors to a forum
like c.l.py is signal/noise ratio. I much prefer competent but rude
remarks to friendly ignorance which just wastes my time.

Calling someone stupid might not be the most pedagogic or diplomatic
approach when an ignorant person fails to realize his limitations,
but it's understandable. Being so stupid is also understandable.

It's easy for reasonably smart people to find (perceived) flaws in
the reasonings of others, but with age I've learned that I can usually
learn a lot from others even if I feel that I can crush their arguments.
There is usually something more behind their resistance to my ideas,
and if I manage to figure out what the real problem is, I can often
avoid getting into trouble...

The best discussions are the ones that make me change my mind about
something. Then I've grown. That's difficult if I let my ego be in
charge.

I guess you either need to be involved some fairly big, real world
development project where APIs are used by many people outside the
project, or alternatively read (and understand) any serious book on
software engineering, to really realize that changing public APIs
*is* a major issue. If you use Python more as a toy, and just write
snippets, it's difficult to imagine the cost of small API changes
for the big organizations who use the same APIs.

 

[Istvan Albert]

I was shocked to see the personal insults hurled in this thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/d0758cb9545cad4b

Ahhh, no need to overreact, that's just the usual Friday night steel
cage match:

Fredrik vs "Poster Who is Convinced That The World Should Urgently
Change to Fit His Views"

If I could bet on the outcome I'd rich by now, in lieu of that I just
sit back and enjoy the show.

i.

ps. as for the title of this post, it is ironic that you are insulting
another community while asking for no insults

 

[Steve Holden]

Istvan Albert wrote:
[...]

ps. as for the title of this post, it is ironic that you are insulting
another community while asking for no insults

Perhaps so, but none the less comp.lang.perl has a demonstrable history
of newbie-flaming. Don't know what it's like now, as it's years since I
read that group, but they used to just love the smell of crisply-toasted
newbie in the morning ;-)

regards
Steve

 

[MonkeeSage]

Perhaps so, but none the less comp.lang.perl has a demonstrable history
of newbie-flaming. Don't know what it's like now, as it's years since I
read that group, but they used to just love the smell of crisply-toasted
newbie in the morning ;-)

C'mon! No reason why a newbie should be confused by a hyper-fatugly,
err, "hyper-fatarrow" every now and then [1]! What, are newbies totally
dense or something?! )

[1] http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl6.language/25946

Regards,
Jordan

 

[Steve Holden]

Perhaps so, but none the less comp.lang.perl has a demonstrable history
of newbie-flaming. Don't know what it's like now, as it's years since I
read that group, but they used to just love the smell of crisply-toasted
newbie in the morning ;-)

C'mon! No reason why a newbie should be confused by a hyper-fatugly,
err, "hyper-fatarrow" every now and then [1]! What, are newbies totally
dense or something?! )

[1] http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl6.language/25946

My God, Perl 6 is going to be even less comprehensible that Perl 5,
which was at least usable. Is »=>« really a Perl6 operator? That's too
funny!

hoping-the-chevrons-were-emphasis-on-ly y'rs - steve

 

[Pierre Quentel]

I am also shocked by Fredrick Lundh's impoliteness and think he makes
this group less friendly than I expected when I read this on
http://www.python.org/community/lists/:

"Rudeness and personal attacks, even in reaction to blatant flamebait,
are strongly frowned upon. People may strongly disagree on an issue,
but usually discussion remains civil"

This should apply to anyone, from the newbie to the most valuable
contributor to Python

Regards,
Pierre

 

[A.M. Kuchling]

My God, Perl 6 is going to be even less comprehensible that Perl 5,
which was at least usable. Is »=>« really a Perl6 operator? That's too
funny!

While we poor Python people have to cope with writing:
d = dict(zip(k, v))
instead of Perl 6's
%h = @k >>=><< @v;

But at least the Perl solution is 4 non-whitespace characters
shorter... unless you don't write the source in Unicode, in which you
have to put >> and << instead of the chevrons -- that makes it only 2
characters shorter.

hoping-the-chevrons-were-emphasis-on-ly y'rs - steve

Nope; they turn the operator into a hyper operator that iterates over
its operands. See
<http://dev.perl.org/perl6/doc/design/syn/S03.html#___top>. Perl 6:
the PL/1 of scripting languages.

--amk

 

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

My God, Perl 6 is going to be even less comprehensible that Perl 5,
which was at least usable. Is »=>« really a Perl6 operator? That's too
funny!

http://www.ozonehouse.com/mark/blog/code/PeriodicTable.html

Based upon that

=>

and

==>

are two separate, distinct, operators... Along with

<=> +>>= and +<<=

--
Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber KD6MOG
(e-mail address removed) (e-mail address removed)
HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/
(Bestiaria Support Staff: (e-mail address removed))
HTTP://www.bestiaria.com/

 

[Ilias Lazaridis]

I was shocked to see the personal insults hurled in this thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/d0758cb9545cad4b

I have been very pleased with Python developers regardless of skill
levels in both the IRC channel as well as here - no hot attitudes. No
holier than thou put ons. I was just sinking into the comradery and
cooperative nature of this new powerful community when I saw that
thread.

Well, I hope that the fact that 99% of the Python community, from Guido
von Rossum on down continues to exemplify how a language can be good
and the people can be friendly and that the other 1% get inspired by
their positivity and switch as well...

I've reviewed a little the thread.

I've not evaluated the possible use-cases of "cgi.escape".

The question is always: who start's the use of insults?

I just noticed one thing:

The OP wrote (refering to an implementationd detail, which btw. has
possible resulted after many days of thought/trials in context of
several use-cases):

"This seems to me to be dumb"
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/d0758cb9545cad4b

which could be interpreted as: "the implementor seems to be dumb"

So, personally I think the implementor was free to reply "bla bla bla,
you idiot".

This was not an insult.

Just a gentle gesture (using similar wording as the OP).

..

 

[Robert Hicks]

Istvan Albert wrote:
[...]

ps. as for the title of this post, it is ironic that you are insulting
another community while asking for no insults

Perhaps so, but none the less comp.lang.perl has a demonstrable history
of newbie-flaming. Don't know what it's like now, as it's years since I
read that group, but they used to just love the smell of crisply-toasted
newbie in the morning ;-)

Funny you mention that...there was a Perl talk recently and one of the
slides said "Stop being fu***ing mean to newbies!". I ask the author of
the talk and he said he didn't actually have to read the slide but it
was effective non-the-less.

Robert

 

[Mirco Wahab]

Thus spoke A.M. Kuchling (on 2006-09-30 19:26):

While we poor Python people have to cope with writing:
d = dict(zip(k, v))
instead of Perl 6's
%h = @k >>=><< @v;

But at least the Perl solution is 4 non-whitespace characters shorter...

Didn't I get the joke?

The Perl version would be a hash slice initialization on %dict:

@dict{ @k } = @v;

Thats it. What is the fuzz all about? I consider 'hyper fatarrow'
(you did't the »=>« get right) just a joke of LW
(he does so sometimes ;-).

Regards

Mirco

 

[Ant]

Thus spoke A.M. Kuchling (on 2006-09-30 19:26):

Thats it. What is the fuzz all about? I consider 'hyper fatarrow'
(you did't the »=>« get right) just a joke of LW
(he does so sometimes ;-).

Don't think so, I followed the thread along a little, and it seems to
be correct. In addition, they seem to have the ¥ character as the Perl
6 equivalent of zip(). Those crazy guys. Actually this post cracked me
up (Subject: My first functional perl6 program):
http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl6.language/25953

Either the poster has posted a binary file, or the Perl 6 syntax is
crazier than anyone could have imagined! ;-)

 

[MonkeeSage]

Don't think so, I followed the thread along a little, and it seems to
be correct. In addition, they seem to have the ¥ character as the Perl
6 equivalent of zip(). Those crazy guys.

Yup, I don't think it was a joke either; there are several other
"hyper" operators already in pugs:
http://svn.openfoundry.org/pugs/src/Pugs/Parser/Operator.hs (see tests:
http://svn.openfoundry.org/pugs/t/operators/hyper.t ).

Regards,
Jordan