[Python-Dev] [Distutils] PEP 376 - from PyPM's point of view

[P.J. Eby]

At 06:40 PM 7/15/2009 +0100, Paul Moore wrote:
>And of course, someone has to do the clean-up. It seems to me that the
>fact that people are more inclined to reinvent the code than to try to
>understand the existing codebase and pick out the relevant bits, says
>something important about how easy it would be to maintain the
>existing code within the Python core...

That's normal for any code that contains "legacy" issues, which is 
why people always prefer rewriting code they don't understand: it's 
more fun to write than to read.  However, as Joel Spolsky has well 
explained, rewriting such code inevitably means that you must 
re-learn the lessons that were learned by the original author.

It seems like a waste, but then, I suppose those lessons must be 
relearned *some* way.  I just think it'd be better if, having 
re-learned most of the lessons by trying to rewrite, one could then 
go back and learn the rest from the code.  ;-)

That having been said, it's obviously a dead parrot... one which I 
will now cease attempting to revive.