[Python-Dev] User's complaints

[Brett Cannon]

On 7/12/06, Armin Rigo <arigo at tunes.org> wrote:
>
> Hi Brett,
>
> On Tue, Jul 11, 2006 at 06:05:21PM -0700, Brett Cannon wrote:
> > It is the last point in the first paragraph on time.strftime()
> discussing
> > what changed in Python 2.4 as to what the change was.  It's also in
> > Misc/NEWS .  Basically the guy didn't read the release notes or the docs
> to
> > see why that changed and that it was legitimate and needed for
> stability.
>
> Surely everybody should read and think carefully about each (longish)
> NEWS file for each software package whenever they update their machines
> or switch to one with newer software than they last used.
>
> Or if they cannot bother, surely they should read at least Python's?


Obviously I don't expect people to read all of the docs; I know I don't.
But when something I am using starts to act differently in a program (and
especially a programming language), I do do at least a little
investigating.  I don't expect people to read Misc/NEWS upfront, but if
something suddnely starts to act differently I would expect them to at least
try to figure it out and hopefully report a bug if it is one.

I guess I'm going to side with Greg Black on his blog entry.
> Only two breakages is certainly nice, and I know that we all try quite
> hard to minimize that; that's probably still two breakages too much.


As Neal said, we are not perfect; bugs happen.  If we all gave up on a piece
of software after two bugs we would not be able to turn our computers.  =)

-Brett
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