On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 4:22 PM, "Martin v. Löwis" martin@v.loewis.dewrote:

...

Would whoever is responsible for IDLE please take a look at the patches I submitted for Python 2 & 3 [tracker IDs 5233 and 5234 respectively]. These change the behavior of IDLE so that IDLESTARTUP or PYTHONSTARTUP files are executed with each restart. This allows loading frequently used packages, personal utilities, etc. automatically at each restart. I consider this a very important problem in IDLE, especially when using it to teach.

Just to put this into perspective: I personally don't see that as a very important problem. I didn't know IDLESTARTUP existed, and I use PYTHONSTARTUP only for the command line (to setup readline and history). I think there are many more open issues that are *way* more important.

Martin,

No disrespect intended but I don't see how this puts things into perspective. I'm writing to you from the annual computer science education conference (SIGCSE) where Python is clearly gaining ground as an important language for teaching computer science.

It seems logical to me that the committers are high powered Python users who don't think much about Python being used in education. I'm just as frustrated as Mitchell about a patch for displaying ranges and dict_keys/values objects in a more user friendly way. I submitted this patch during the 3.0 alpha phase and it is still sitting around. For me this is a serious problem, but I can understand how it seems pretty minor to others, who are not teaching new programmers.

So what is the solution? The obvious solution is for one of us, that is someone who uses Python as an education tool, to become a committer. This seems problematic to me. Although I'm willing to be a committer, and I'm confident I have the development skills necessary to be a committer I don't have the time to develop the resume of patches needed to earn that privilege.

It would be nice if we could find some solution to this.

Brad

This is not to say that the patch should not applied - I haven't even looked at it. It's just a warning that, if no other committer feels this is as important as you fell it is, it may not be committed reviewed and committed before 3.1.

Regards, Martin _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/bmiller%40luther.edu

So what is the solution?

In the specific case, I don't know. I recall that somebody offered to pick up the change. I really didn't mean to suggest that the patch will remain unnoticed - it was just a warning that it *might* remain unnoticed.

The more general issue is that of patches being unreviewed for a long time, whether they have educational background or some other background (say, cross-compilation, HP-UX support, etc).

From time to time, people ask what they can do push a change into Python

that they really think is important. I once offered that people who want a patch in Python really badly should review 10 other patches in return, up to the point where they make a recommendation about the fate of the patches. I was then talked into accepting just 5 such patches. I have since withdrawn this offer, because a) I was the only one making that offer in public, and b) I was sometimes not really able to respond in a timely manner when the offer was invoked, because of overload.

So, for the more general issue, I don't have a solution, either.

Regards, Martin

Well, that happens. An alternative to withdrawing entirely, would be increasing the price (eg, to ten patches as you originally suggested). Or specifying windows in your calendar when the offer is open. Eg, avoid doubling up on release times when you need make time to build installers etc. ... but of course just before release is when people will get antsy about their "lost" patches.

I hope that somebody will pick up the slack here, because review is really important to the workflow, and getting more people involved in reviewing at some level is more important (because it's less glamorous in itself) than attracting coders.

It's funny ... I would have thought that one of the most attractive aspects of offering patches for inclusion was not just getting feature X into the language, but the opportunity to have your code reviewed by the best of the best, or similarly to review the code of others and really think about its strengths and weaknesses. I would have said that participating in a project at that level would basically be the best opportunity for ongoing learning and development available. I guess I'm saying that I'm surprised people aren't a bit more appreciative of the opportunity to review code. I mean, I wouldn't think that Python was "just work" for anyone who has the passion to commit back to the core project. I don't think I would even be on this list or attempting to put together my first (and almost inconseqentially small) patch if it weren't for the fact that I see it as a huge opportunity. It's certainly not an attempt to 'push' anything into the language.

Obviously that's what you found though -- people who weren't really understanding of how the language gets put together. I can imagine having held that view in the past myself, also. I can to some extent understand the perspective of feeling you have some fantastic idea which you'd love to get implemented; yet the people who can make it happen are too concerned with their own issues to take the time to roll in your changes.

Would you object to my blogging on the topic in line with the comments that I have just made? I almost feel silly making that kind of suggestion after having only been here a short time -- I feel a bit boorish! -- but having run The Python Papers and also no longer being a 'green' developer at work, I feel as though I do have something to contribute on the topic even if it is somewhat immaturely conceived.

Regards, -Tennessee

Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

A suggestion, though. View the contribution visualization video based on the commit log (the URL was posted here a while back, but I don't seem to have it offhand), which shows what a vibrant community this is in a very graphic way.

There's one here: http://www.vimeo.com/1093745

That one runs up until just after the switch to subversion (as indicated by the big influx of "new" names at the end, which is largely an artifact of usernames changing from shortened forms to full names).

Cheers, Nick.

I've been watching the threads about tracker maintenance and patch review with interest. I'm afraid that I did not follow the list recommendation to introduce myself when I first started posting, partly because I initially jumped in on something that was a bit of a hot button issue for me :)

So, a little belatedly, here is my intro. I've been coding in and loving Python since 1993 or thereabouts. I am currently an independent IT consultant, with specialization in IP networking (especially Cisco), Lunix and Unix system administration, and systems integration. It is in my systems integration work that I make heavy use of Python, writing scripts and programs to tie systems together and/or add needed functionality.

In my previous life I was Director of Technology for an ISP, and at one stage we were heavy into web site development. At that time I worked with the Zope community quite a bit, and made some contributions to the beginnings of Zope3. So for at least a few people this might be more of a re-introduction.

I've decided that this year I would like to get more involved in the Python community. As another poster said, I'm looking forward to the opportunity to work with and learn from some very smart people. And then there's the satisfaction of giving back to a community that has given me so much over the years, by producing such a delightful language in which to do my coding.

So, I've been reading the developer docs, setting up a bzr checkout, learning how to compile a debug python and run tests, wandering around in the source code, etc, etc.

My thought about how I could best contribute at the present time is to help out with reviewing tracker issues. I actually updated the open tracker issue with the oldest last activity date this morning, as a sort of trial run. Unless someone wants to suggest a different way for me to contribute (I'm open to any suggestions), I'll probably continue through the list in reverse order of last update date and cherry pick things that interest me and that I think I can make some sort of contribution to.

Don't hesitate to let me know if I miss etiquette points (gently, please :).

Oh, and I'll be at pycon this year (my second pycon, the first was several years back), and look forward to hanging out with a cool bunch of people :)

--RDM

On Sat, 7 Mar 2009 at 08:42, Aahz wrote:

On Sat, Mar 07, 2009, rdmurray@bitdance.com wrote:

...

So, a little belatedly, here is my intro. [...]

--RDM

Welcome! You apparently haven't set your $NAME nor listed a name in your .sig, so how do you prefer to be addressed? Or do you just prefer your initials, like RMS? ;-)

Thanks.

Initials is fine, but I'm more used to 'David' as form of address. I have been using my initials in my sig because there are just too many Davids around.

I suppose changing my sig to my name and my website wouldn't be be a bad thing, so...

-- R. David Murray http://www.bitdance.com