Acrimony in c.l.p.

[Terry Hancock]

On Sunday 22 December 2002 06:16 am,  Gary Duncan wrote:
> Laura Creighton:
> > leave, saying 'this is a waste of my valuable time, and besides it
> > hurts too much'.  Then new people do not join, because they have better
> > things to do as well, even if it is taking them a heck of a lot longer
> > to do them because they don't have anybody to answer their questions.
> > 
> > Absolutely everybody I have talked to about this has said that this is
> > inevitable and it will happen to comp.lang.python as well.  That is why
> 
>         I've read c.l.p for a couple of years and even tho I'm not a avid
>         practioner of the language, I check it regularly because to me
>         the experience is like having a relaxing sauna in the company of
>         refined and civilized folk :)

I think there is some hope that Python, as a language, attracts "nice"* 
people.  Think about some of its distinguishing characteristics:

1) It not only makes things easy, it makes them *look* easy. Perl and Lisp 
don't do this -- they make it look hard, which makes you look smarter if you 
can understand it, which fuels pecking-order battles.  Python, I find, is 
consistently frustrating to any such impulses I might have.  Most newbies can 
figure out even fairly clever code by reading the source alone.  There are 
exceptions, but, IMHO, not as many.

2) It makes a form of literate-programming very easy. Some packages, like 
Zope will even enforce the use of docstrings.  It also uses descriptive names 
instead of obscure symbols which must be memorized. Both practices attract 
capable writers.

Capable writers are "nice" on usenet for several reasons -- they don't feel 
as threatened by competing arguments, because they have no difficulty 
articulating their position. They generally will have had experience with 
competing/dissenting opinions in print, and can cope with the idea. They 
feel, much more than other people, that their reputation rides on what they 
write, and, finally, they are better able to back down without losing face. 
And, of course, if all my English teachers are any guide, they are much more 
intolerant of rants and cussing as forms of expression, and have a consistent 
idea of the "rules of discourse".

3) All that "explicit is better than implicit" stuff, combined with the ease 
of reverse engineering python code, and the nature of the python license 
itself, makes Python a crummy language for the knowledge-hider. It is, by 
design, a language for open-source development.  And the open-source 
community, in turn, relies on "good behavior" to function.  Although I do not 
consider altruism to be a pre-requisite for developing open-source, it does 
help, and at minimum, a degree of community spirit is needed for such 
projects to work.

So I think there may be a selection effect going on here, and I personally am 
glad for it.

not-gonna-make-me-a-fatalist-ly yours,
Terry

*Obviously this is a specialized definition of "nice" -- I specifically mean 
people who will show a pronounced predisposition to "behaving themselves"
on newsgroups. I actually imagine that some of the so-called "jerks" are 
actually nice people in person who are corrupted by the relative anonymity of 
the net (compare: drivers).
--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks  http://www.anansispaceworks.com

"Some things are too important to be taken seriously"