[Python-Dev] Software integrators vs end users (was Re: Language Summit notes)

[Paul Moore]

On 18 April 2014 16:58, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> As part of thrashing out the respective distribution ecosystem roles
> of pip and conda (still a work in progress), we're at least converging
> on the notion that there are actually now *two* main ways of consuming
> Python: as a "software integrator" (the way most of us have
> traditionally consumed it, and the way that dominates most project
> documentation outside the scientific Python community) and as an "end
> user" (the way Linux system administrators have long consumed it, and
> the way scientists, financial analysts and folks just learning Python
> are likely best off consuming it).
>
> Making these different personas explicit is a process that has barely
> begun (this email is mostly based on some conversations I had in
> person at PyCon and via email during the sprints), but here's the gist
> (based on listing examples):

Interesting perspective. However, I'm not convinced it's complete.
Specifically, there's one group of people who I encounter relatively
often, who don't seem to me to fit well into either category you're
proposing. That is, (Windows in my experience, but maybe Linux as
well) users who want to write "simple scripts" and for whom batch
files or similar are not sufficient. Such people typically don't have
the sort of "single application area" focus that your "end user"
category seems to imply, but on the other hand they don't really fit
the "software integrators" role in the sense of necessarily being
comfortable setting up their own development environment.

I worry that your classification risks ignoring that group (maybe
because Unix users are well served with other alternatives than Python
for this type of task, or because on Unix "use the system Python" is
the right answer).

Your list of "end user" targeted distributions seem to be limited to:

  - Linux distribution vendors
  - Vendors focused on the essentially scientific community (in the
broadest sense)
  - Embedded Python

That's very far from being complete coverage of all the people *I'd*
like to be able to recommend Python to. Specifically, unless we're not
interested in "generic" Windows users, I think we need to offer *some*
form of equivalent of the OS-packaged Python on Linux for Windows
users. That's what the python.org builds, plus pip, wheels and PyPI,
give for Windows users now. Hmm, if we assume that supporting that
remains a priority, is what you're really saying that we *don't* try
to extend that to work for Linux/OSX, as doing so competes with the OS
vendors - but rather we see python.org binaries and binary
infrastructure like wheels as being focused on the Windows user
experience?

(I wish I'd been at PyCon, this would have been a very interesting
discussion to have face to face. Email isn't ideal for this...)

Paul.