[PYTHON META-SIG] would-be pattern-sig cont'd

[Dinu Gherman]

Hello all,

back from Easter vacation I see a bursting mailbox indicating
that we are moving again a little bit on the python pattern
issue. Marc has added to the initial proposal w/o knowing of
the one I sent to Barry just before last weekend. I am sorry
I did not spread it further. Following Barry's suggestions,
it's much more concise now and less fuzzy. Also, it names
some deliverables to head for. Read yourself below!

Now some general comments of mine. To me it seems there is a
certain misunderstanding. Some people in the PSA believe that
the would-be SIG's main goal is discussion. That's not the
way I see it. Clearly, a SIG's goal should be to 'do'
something and produce 'results', visible to all. I think we
all agree on this. To do this we also need to discuss, of
course. The problem comes when determining how to do both
most appropriately.

IMHO, netnews is simply less suited for having a
well-controlled communication than a mailing list. I think
you know all the reasons for that, so I don't repeat them
here. But one I want to stress is that if you work together
at something and you must exchange material (sources, docs)
netnews is certainly a pain. This is why I started playing
with BSCW. I see BSCW as a good tool to work together and a
mailing list as a good tool to discuss about one's work. Not
more and not less.

Barry writes:
> [...] I'm a
> little worried about its experimental nature and it less-than-open
> policy:
>
>     "So, there are wuite sone "don't do's" like: don't do any serious
>      work with it, don't create other, personal workspaces, don't
>      upload huge files and don't invite the whole Python community."
>
> If BSCW were to be an intergral part of PatternSIG, it ought to be
> open to any member of the SIG, which is potentially open to anybody.

Well, this was not meant to create an elitist place, of
course. All I tried to say was that it's running on my
machine (not running 365 days a year) and I think nobody
likes if people upload plenty of stuff on his box w/o reason.
Also, BSCW's access model is not finished yet, so the best
thing to do would be to establish public and private work-
spaces reflecting a division into a stable library and a
brittle repository of whatever we gather.

Responding to Fred, yes, I am interested in becoming the SIG's
shephard, although I might change position/location in the
very near future, but that should affect things only temporary,
I guess. Also, I think Fredrik showed interest and I know
he's using patterns a lot, so maybe a joint effort would be
in order?

I must add one final remark. I see this would-be SIG in
several ways as an attempt of bringing two communities
closer to each other (patterns and Python) with quite some
potential benefit for both. In fact, the whole idea started
out in the pattern community ;-) ... more on this later.
But as in software design you must provide clean and concise
interfaces between different components. And I don't see this
happen with sticking to a netnews-based communication. What
can I tell pattern heroes? To start using Python and look
into comp.lang.python because .5% of the traffic deals with
patterns implemented in Python? Not really, isn't it?

Cheers,

Dinu

PS: Sorry, if you receive this mail twice.



Proposal: Pattern-SIG Mission Statement (#2)

PATTERN-SIG, a Special Interest Group for using Python with
emphasis on idioms, patterns and frameworks.

This list has been created to provide a forum for discussing
issues related to using design techniques and practices
together with Python. These concepts range from the small-
scale programming idioms and 'tricks' to medium-scale design
patterns, usually comprising entities of several classes, to
large-scale designs based on frameworks, often combining
several patterns themselves. By doing that we emphasize
questions and issues, not to be learned from the study of a
programming language alone, but only from the interaction
with its users' experience and projects. We do believe that
there is valuable design experience to be communicated on
several levels (idioms, patterns, frameworks) and we want to
see that happen here.

We are interested in what patterns have emerged within the
Python community, we are curious to see if these are similar
to those developed by others and we'd like you be aware that
you probably are already using patterns, but that it makes
much sense to be aware about them for your own benefit and for
that of others. If you've been using design patterns conscious-
ly, even better. We want to know about your experience and talk
about patterns from various sources like those of the Gang-of-
Four (GOF). Please share your experience with us!

Apart from discussing on this list, the PATTERN-SIG will collect
and collate common programming patterns, idioms, and tricks of
the trade, of general use to the Python community.  Its mission
is to produce a set of well-indexed Web pages that Python pro-
grammers can use as reference material for their own projects.
In order to do so, we will use whatever tools seem appropriate
to collaboratively develop the material to be presented later.

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