On Mon, Nov 27, 2017 at 4:36 PM, Paul Moore <p.f.moore@gmail.com> wrote:
On 27 November 2017 at 21:59, Nick Timkovich <prometheus235@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Nov 27, 2017 at 8:17 PM, Brett Cannon <brett@python.org> wrote:
But calling it "atrocious" and so bad that it needs to be fixed "immediately" as if it's a blight upon the stdlib is unnecessarily
insulting
to those that have worked on the module. To convey the feeling that you think an OO wrapper would be helpful as the current design doesn't work for you, you could just phrase it as I just did to get the same point across without insulting anyone. Basically if you wouldn't like your own work called "atrocious" by someone you respect, then it's probably best to not use that phrasing when talking about a stranger's code either.
Sorry for the curt tone, I did lose some sight on the code being designed by people rather than a faceless organization. My intention wasn't to disparage the original authors but sprung more out of my frustration and perception from that thread and those before that the status quo would not change and that if a contribution was proffered, would simply be dismissed or ignored. To motivate any change, there must be some argument levied against the status quo, but hopefully I can articulate it better.
That little corner is something I'm interested in, and not having contributed to CPython before, I'm unsure how it "really works". The steps at https://devguide.python.org/stdlibchanges/ suggest trying to elicit community feedback from the lists as a step, so negative feedback tends to kill the enthusiasm to actually make the PR. In the absence of code, concrete arguments are almost impossible as we're discussing the shape of clouds.
In my experience (and this reiterates Brett's point) the proposals that get the best responses are those that are presented positively - instead of focusing on the (perceived) problems with the current situation, describe the benefits that will come from the proposed change. If you can't do that, then it's unlikely there is enough justification for a change. Certainly, negative feedback can be demotivating, and when you have a great idea and all you hear is "but what if...?" it's hard to remain positive. But you're not going to get better feedback if you criticise - at best, people will stop listening, and you'll have avoided some of the arguments, but at the cost of no-one being willing to support your proposal and so it dies.
My first submission to this list was predicated on what I'd read in PEPs -- and many of those, since they recommend major-enough changes to require a PEP, have sections (often lengthy) dedicated to "what's wrong with the status quo". My attempt to imitate that obviously crossed some boundaries in retrospect, and of course now that it's brought up here I see that spinning it as "what can be done to make it better" is psychologically much more effective than "why the current way sucks" (because semantically these are either approximately or exactly the same). But that's where it came from, at least with some of my earlier threads, and I suspect the author of the topic message of the OP will have a similar sentiment. (One major example I can point to is PEP 465 -- because it proposed such a major change to the language, literally half its text amounts to "what's wrong with the status quo", quantifiably and repeatedly. It was also a highly persuasive PEP due in no small part to its "why current things suck" section.)