[stdlib-sig] Python-the-platform vs Python-the-framework

[Antoine Pitrou]

Le mercredi 16 septembre 2009 à 18:35 +0300, Orestis Markou a écrit :
> 
> Hopefully it will help the discussion go forward, and perhaps help the
> people who are writing PEPs.

What would already help would be properly formatting your email. Most of
it is unreadable here... A good guideline is probably to send only plain
text email, so that your email editor's peculiarities don't fool you.

> We should let domain experts develop solutions for their domains
> outside the stdlib,

Nobody forbids them to do so.

Besides, you overlooked that not every domain is a fast-evolving
ecosystem in which everyone runs after the bleeding edge.

XML (the format, not the surrounding dialects and so-called
"technologies"), for example, has been quite stable. JSON, once it is
normalized, will probably not evolve a lot. URL quoting has been the
same for years. Even HTTP, to my knowledge, hasn't evolved a lot, and
the stdlib's weakness on that matter seems largely orthogonal to recent
evolutions.

For all these things, it seems quite reasonable and helpful to provide
solutions in the stdlib, rather than requiring the user to evaluate,
choose and install third-party libraries. Yes, the solutions must be
well-written, robust, flexible. There's no reason, however, why they
shouldn't be, except accidental (historical) reasons which were also
correlated with looser inclusion procedures.

> == Backwards compatibility is a straw man==

Starting your text like this will not encourage people to read what
follows... Since it is so badly formatted, I've stopped anyway.

Regards

Antoine.