[Pythonmac-SIG] install again?

[lanceboyle at qwest.net]

I agree pretty much completely with Charles Harman, Bill Janssen, and  
others. I learned programming in 1974 and have programmed ever since  
for my own engineering work. I use and have used many languages,  
trying to pick the best one for the job. I have gripes with many of  
the specialized languages/environments meant for technical work, so I  
prefer to work in a "real" language. For many years that was Pascal,  
and nowadays it's mostly Ada (not intended as a slight to Python).

But I digress. Having Unix under the Mac has been a great boon in the  
availability of software. (I wouldn't, for example, be using free GNU  
Ada otherwise.) But I find myself spending far more time pissing  
around with the compiler/OS etc. than I used to in the old days. This  
is not progress. Not to ruffle feathers, but to offer a constructive  
criticism: The Unix culture and the Macintosh culture are at odds  
with one another. It is _not_ necessary to program with a good  
language while suffering the details of what's under the hood. As  
examples of this, I offer the much-missed THINK Pascal. (See the  
several threads on THINK Pascal on the MacPascal list.) This was the  
epitome of power and ease-of-use, in my opinion. I suspect (I have  
only played with it) that another example is REALbasic, recently  
Cocoa-able.

Every time I bring this topic up in a Unix-y setting (SciPy  
recently), I get slammed. So please listen. Try to make software that  
can be used by people who aren't part of the "inside" crowd. This  
requires letting go of your ego and imagining what the world looks  
like from their viewpoint. Pretend you're setting up airport traffic  
signs for people from out of town, not the locals. Make an Installer  
for Dummies. Make an IDE that works in the Mac way. (Where are you,  
Glenn?) Make Cocoa access automatic with the installation. Make a  
simplified, high-level Cocoa-based GUI API. Make an easy and cohereht  
add-on method. Make adding SciPy and Chaco a no-brainer. (Oops--wrong  
list.) Never require a user to build his/her own software. Don't  
expand the user's lexicon with the likes of mpkg, egg, setuptools,  
patches, distutils, and so on.

You are making end-user software. Remember that most of the people  
who use or would use Python don't program for a living, or don't even  
like to program--they do it because they have to.

Hell, go get THINK Pascal and see what I'm talking about. (E.g., the  
entire Toolbox was predefined. The debugger was sublime.) It's free  
now, long ago abandoned but still used and supported by fans who are  
loath to run OS 9 but for it.

Python with a good Mac-way IDE has so much potential to reach the  
same usability as THINK Pascal did in 1984.

And of course, thanks to the dedicated people who make it possible  
for me have anything at all to on which to suggest improvements. 8^)

Jerry




On Feb 6, 2006, at 8:43 AM, Charles Hartman wrote:

> Oh well, "other platforms" -- if that means Linux of course you  
> have to learn those same things, but you undoubtedly already know  
> them. If it means Windows, I'd rather drive a truck, and I'm  
> thinking particularly of potential users who feel the same way.

> <snip>

> Charles
>
>
>
> On Feb 6, 2006, at 10:06 AM, Kevin Walzer wrote:
>
>> Just to continue the conversation, what do *you* think is the best
>> approach? How should Python be made easier than it already is (and,
>> frankly, compared to C, it's pretty easy)? What special  
>> difficulties or
>> obstacles does the Mac platform present to learning Python that  
>> are not
>> also present on other platforms?
>