PEP scepticism

[Tim Peters]

[Andrew Kuchling]
> ...
> But would I rather have had list comprehensions or a catalog of all
> Python extensions similar to CPAN?  I'd have much preferred the latter,
> because it would make a greater improvement in my programming life
> than, say, list comprehensions do.  This doesn't imply that list
> comprehensions don't improve my life at all (they do) ...

So what do you do about the curious disconnect between supply and demand in
Open Source projects?  You got list comprehensions because Greg Ewing (and
later Thomas Wouters) generously volunteered to supply them, not because,
e.g., Guido *decided* they were more important at the time than was a CPAN
workalike.  The Python distribution is the sum of what Python users have
contributed.  That's why, e.g., why we ship tabnanny.py instead of a GUI
builder.

But note that "instead of" is dead wrong, and so possibly <wink> misleading:
nothing I ever worked on took away from the time I would have spent on a GUI
builder instead, because I never would have worked on the latter regardless
(it's not my thing -- no interest, and no competence).  A similar dynamic
holds in case after case.  Even if *everyone* wants some gimmick X, it won't
happen unless volunteers work on X.  Speaking of which, we really need a web
app to match up Python projects with potential volunteers <wink>.

things-will-be-different-when-microsoft-owns-python-ly y'rs  - clipitimbot