<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><span>On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 9:37 AM, Carl Meyer <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:carl@oddbird.net" target="_blank">carl@oddbird.net</a>></span> wrote:<br></span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span><span><br>
</span>I'm a Django core developer. For the last half-year or so, the Django<br>
Software Foundation has (for the first time) paid a "Django Fellow" or<br>
two (currently Tim Graham) to work on core Django. For me the experience<br>
has been excellent.<br>
<br></span><span>
So based on my experience with the transition to having a DSF-paid<br>
Fellow on the Django core team, and having watched important python-dev<br>
work (e.g. the core workflow stuff) linger due to lack of available<br>
volunteer time, I'd recommend that python-dev run, not walk, to ask the<br>
PSF board to fund a similar position for Python core.<br>
<br>
Of course there may be differences between the culture of python-dev and<br>
Django core<div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><br></div></div></div></div></span></blockquote><div><br><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><br><br>A view from the other side.<br><br><br>Yeah I guess its a good idea for PSF to spend some money to clear 'ugly' bugs.<br>Dunno about the proc-n-cons of this so wont get into it.<br><br>Instead I'd like to draw attention to the free side of the equation --<br><br>What would it take to have more hands with sleeves rolled up and doing<br>the housecleaning?<br><br>Context:<br>We had a bunch of college students (2nd year Engineering) doing some projects <br>with us.<br>One was inside the CPython sources: <br><a href="https://github.com/rusimody/l10Python" target="_blank">https://github.com/rusimody/l10Python</a><br>Their final presentation was last Thursday.<br><br>Q: Is there anything in there that can reasonably be a patch for python?<br>A: Please dont be embarrassing!<br><br>However as a student project it was enough for us to say: "Good work!"<br>Here's an REPL-session to demo:<br>[Note १२३४५६७८९० is devanagari equivalent of 1234567890]<br>--------------------------------------------------<br>Python 3.5.0b2 (default, Jul 30 2015, 19:32:42) <br>[GCC 4.9.2] on linux<br>Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.<br>>>> १२<br>12<br>>>> 23 == २३<br>True<br>>>> १२ + ३४<br>46<br>>>> १२ + 34<br>46<br>>>> "12" == "१२"<br>False<br>>>> 2 ≤ 3<br>True<br>>>> 2 ≠ 3<br>True<br>>>> (λ x: x+3)(4)<br>7<br>>>> # as a result of which this doesn't work... I did say they are kids!<br>... <br>>>> δ = 3<br> File "<stdin>", line 1<br> δ = 3<br> ^<br>SyntaxError: invalid syntax<br>>>> {1,2,3} ∩ {2,3,4}<br>{2, 3}<br>>>> {1,2,3} ∪ {2,3,4}<br>{1, 2, 3, 4}<br>>>> ¬ True<br>False<br>>>> Σ([1,2,3,4])<br>10<br>>>> <br>----------------------------------------------<br>The last is actually more an embarrassment than the δ breaking since<br>they’ve *changed the lexer* to read the Σ when all that was required was<br>Σ = sum !!<br><br>In short... Kids!<br><br>However as kids we could say they are farther to being programmers than they were before <br>this -- opening something of the scale of CPython, finding one's way around and adding/modifying<br>even the tiniest bit of functionality is a big growing-up step.<br><br>Brings me to the point of this mail:<br><br>Surely me+my students is not unique configuration -- there must be zillions of such across the world.<br>And if inexperienced/kids like us had more help from people like the members of <br>this list we would get farther and at least some subset of these may go<br>on to become actual devs/contributors.<br><br>So the request is that some of you give a tiny fraction of your time to teams just mucking<br>around in the CPython codebase as a long term investment to producing more devs even when it is<br>not directly connected to a possible contribution/patch.<br><br>[Yeah I am a lurker on the mentors list but I dont see much *technical* discussion happening there]<br><br>We could actually submit patches.<br>Just that the priorities of the 3 parties -- teachers, students, devs --<br>is clearly different:<br> - Teachers need to give/create a good learning experience<br> - Students need to shine, do well, excel...("show off" is not an inaccurate description)<br> - Devs need the language to progress and bugs to be fixed<br><br>Though these priorities are different I believe a symbiosis is possible.<br>In particular, at least some of the -- for a dev -- 'ugly-bugs' could be a challenge in an academic context.<span></span><br><br></div><div>I will be teaching again to more advanced students this time<br></div><div>If I could find a path through bugs of different challenge-levels we may get some bugs fixed...<br></div><div><br></div><div>Thanks<br></div><div>Rusi<br></div><div><br></div></div></div></div><br></div></div></div></div></div><br>-- <br><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><br><a href="http://blog.languager.org" target="_blank">http://blog.languager.org</a><br><br></div></div></div></div></div>
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