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Community (A Modest Proposal)

Alf P. Steinbach alfps at start.no
Sun Jun 13 16:14:34 EDT 2010 
* Steven D'Aprano, on 13.06.2010 19:57:
> On Sun, 13 Jun 2010 08:42:57 -0700, rantingrick wrote:
>
>> i will start a fork.
>
> That is the most sensible thing you have said yet. Please do so, it will
> be a great thing for the Python community.

Not nice to quote out of context, there was an "if" and a "then" earlier in 
Rick's sentence.

I don't think he'll do it, or if he does, I don't think it will fly.

There are two reasons why I think it won't fly if attempted. One is the 
technical aspect: it's just too much, and maintaining compatibility with 
libraries is in direct conflict with the goal of improvement. The other is 
social: I don't think it would be possible to establish a sufficiently large 
supportive community for something in direct competition with CPython.

What I think will happen regarding the future of Python is the same as currently 
is happening with C++. The language evolved or rather perhaps "devolved" into 
higher complexity than its users, and even the compiler vendors, felt 
comfortable with. And then a number of similar but simpler languages (e.g. 
Objective C and Walter Bright's D, not to mentioned "C++ as a better C" and 
various formalizations of that subset idea) started to fill some of the niche 
that C++ earlier had all of; this is still an ongoing process.

Comparing C++ and Python evolution may seem far fetched, but e.g. the C++ 
standardization working groups adopted the idea of PEPs from Python. In C++ 
they're called "proposals" or "papers" but it's much the same thing. Python has 
Guido, C++ has Bjarne. In both cases the original language was designed 
single-handedly by the god. And in both cases it's now essentially 
design-by-committee.


Cheers,

- Alf

-- 
blog at <url: http://alfps.wordpress.com>
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