[Python-ideas] How to respond to trolling (Guido van Rossum)

[Guido van Rossum]

AFAIK the term comes from a piece by Andrew Kuchling titled "Python warts".
The topic now has its own wiki page:
https://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonWarts

I believe that most of the warts are not even design missteps -- they are
emergent misfeatures, meaning nobody could have predicted how things would
work out.

On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 5:09 PM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, 12 Jan 2017 at 15:22 Random832 <random832 at fastmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Jan 12, 2017, at 17:39, Brett Cannon wrote:
>> > On Wed, 11 Jan 2017 at 20:56 Simon Lovell <simon58500 at bigpond.com>
>> wrote:
>> > > I don't know what is meant by some insults having been thrown in.
>> > > Calling truthiness of non boolean data "Ugly" is an insult? It is
>> ugly.
>> >
>> > Now *that *is insulting to me. Once again, you are allowed to disagree
>> > and
>> > say you don't like how truthiness is handled in Python, but you flat-out
>> > stating something is ugly insults all the time and effort that me and
>> the
>> > other core developers have put into Python to try and make it the best
>> > language we can with the constraints we have to work within.
>>
>> Just out of curiosity... in your estimation, what is a "wart", and why
>> is the term "wart" used for it?
>
>
> That term has been used since before I got involved in Python so I don't
> know its history. To me, a "wart" is a design misstep; there were reasons
> at the time for the design but it has not held up as necessarily the best
> decision. So to me "wart" is not as bad as "ugly" as it tacitly
> acknowledges circumstances were quite possibly different back then and
> 20/20 hindsight is not something we have when making a decision. As a
> community we have collectively agreed some things are warts in Python
> because enough people over time have shared the opinion that something was
> a design misstep.
>
>
>> I mean, this is an accepted term that
>> the Python community uses to refer to things, that is not generally
>> regarded to be cause for an accusation of personally insulting anyone,
>> right? I haven't stepped into an alternate universe?
>
>
> You're focusing on the word and not how the word was presented. The fact
> that Simon started his email with a blanket statement basically saying his
> ideas were great and right automatically shows arrogance. And then
> continuing to say that something is ugly matter-of-factly just continued on
> that theme. I can normally mentally insert an "I think" phrase for people
> when they make a blanket statement like that when the rest of the email was
> reasonable, but the posturing of the email as a whole just didn't all for
> that.
>
> We can argue what adjective or noun could have been used forever, but the
> fact that it was delivered as if in judgment over those who put the time
> and effort to make the decision all those years ago doesn't ever feel good
> to the people being judged and ridiculed (and I know this can seem small,
> but as one of the people being judged regularly I can attest that the
> constant ridicule contributes to burnout).
>
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>



-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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