I'd give up Perl tomorrow if only...

[Aahz]

In article <Pine.LNX.4.44.0206301756130.22298-100000 at palanthas.neverending.org>,
Frank Tobin  <ftobin at neverending.org> wrote:
>
>Yes, I'm talking about non-bundled extension modules.  That's all we're 
>talking about here.  The standard lib is irrevelant to the discussion.

Yes and no.  Thing is, historically Python has done better than Perl at
pulling publicly recognized libraries into the standard library.  This
tends to reduce the interest in a CPAN-like construct.  Perl has more
recently recognized the importance of this, and Perl's standard library
has been growing faster than Python's, I think, due to the backlog of
stuff in CPAN that is being moved.

>I suggest that you be a Perl programmer for a while, and see what having
>CPAN accessible and authoring for it really is like.  You explicitly state
>you aren't familiar with it.  I've been author of a couple CPAN modules
>for about 4 years now, and an extensive user for just as long, and have
>been a Python module writer for just over a year now.  Python is a great
>language, but in terms of a reusable code repository, *nothing* comes
>close to the jewel that is CPAN.  There is a reason you'll hear this over
>and over from people coming to Python from Perl.

But somehow one doesn't hear it very often from people who've been using
Python for a long time -- and certainly nobody has truly stepped up to
the plate to put all the finishing details into place.  Sean
Reifschneider came pretty close, then dropped the ball.  Where's the
itch-scratching that induces people to do the work?

You might be able to get some traction if you concentrate on just the
testing issue (and possibly the README issue).  That's the kind of thing
that gets at least public verbal support from Guido.
-- 
Aahz (aahz at pythoncraft.com)           <*>         http://www.pythoncraft.com/

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