[Python-3000] Python-3000 Digest, Vol 18, Issue 116

[john.m.camara at comcast.net]

On 8/25/07, "Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote:
> Take for example GUI packages. Tkinter is far from ideal, but there
> are many competitors, none of them perfect (not even those packages
> specifically designed to be platform-neutral). We can't very well
> include all of the major packages (PyQt, PyGtk, wxPython, anygui) --
> the release would just bloat tremendously, and getting stable versions
> of all of these would just be a maintenance nightmare. (I don't know
> how Linux distros do it, but they tend to have a large group of people
> *just* devoted to *bundling* stuff, and their release cycles are even
> slower. I don't think Python should be in that business.)

Python can't include all the major packages but it is necessary for any 
language to support a good GUI package in order to be widely adopted 
by the masses.  Right now this is one of Python's weaknesses that needs 
to be corrected.  I agree with you that none of the major packages are 
perfect and at the current slow rate of progress in this area I doubt any 
of them will be perfect any time soon.  There just doesn't seam like there 
is enough motivation out there for this issue to self correct itself unlike the 
situation that is currently go on in the web frameworks where significant 
progress has been made in the last 2 years.  I think its time to just 
pronounce a package as it will be good for the community.  My vote would 
be for wxPython but I'm not someone who truly cares much about GUIs 
as I much prefer to write the back ends of systems and stay far away from 
the front ends.
> 
> Database wrappers are in the same boat, and IMO the approach of
> separately downloadable 3rd party wrappers (sometimes multiple
> competing wrappers for the same database) has served the users well.

I agree with you at this point in time but SQLAlchemy is something special 
and will likely be worthy to be part of the std library in 18-24 months if the 
current rate of development continues.  In my opinion, it's Python's new 
killer library and I expect it will be given a significant amount of positive 
press soon and will help Python's user base grow.

> 
> Would anyone seriously consider including something like Django,
> TurboGears or Pylons in a Python release? I hope not -- these all
> evolve at a rate about 10x that of Python, and the version included
> with a core distribution would be out of date (and a nuisance to
> replace) within months of the core release.

At this point in time none of the web frameworks are worthy to be included 
in the standard library.  I believe the community has been doing a good 
job in this area with great progress being made in the last few years.  What 
we need in the standard library are some additional low level libraries/api 
like WSGI.  For example libraries for authentication/authorization, a web 
services bus to manage WSGI services (to provide start, stop, reload, 
events, scheduler, etc), and a new configuration system so that higher 
level frameworks can seamlessly work together.

John