On Sun, Jun 20, 2010 at 7:42 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull <step...@xemacs.org> wrote: > Laurens Van Houtven writes: > > Yeah, I think the reason for that rule is that the majority of people > > asking about new software actually start or end up in this category. > > I think that the most experienced people have absurdly high standards > for "support" compared to those new to programming. I hope they check > their advice against the real requirements of the new programmer.
Maybe. I'm not very sure about this: for example quite a few parts in Twisted are pretty hazy voodoo magic to me ;-) I actually recommend the high standards stuff to newbies specifically because it's high standards. If I meet some bug, I can probably work around it, but I imagine that it'd be much more frustrating for a newbie to come into contact with a bunch of stuff that really isn't very well polished or supported? I could be wrong. > > Usually it's because they want to do something that people have > > already solved, > > If they're new to programming, they're already in adventure mode. Why > not point out the Road Less Traveled? That will make all the > difference. Of course you should point out that it's going to be > bumpier, and of course that is likely to push the majority of > practical folks back to Python 2. Three big reasons I can think of: because it doesn't always exist, because even if it does exist we don't always know about it, and because people actually helping people in #python would be far less adept at helping people with it :-) We have a bunch of people that end up doing their own thing anyway now, that just means we can't be as helpful later when they have more questions. > But some of them are likely to be > willing to endure a bit of frustration, especially if they're told > that their bug reports will be listened to seriously on python-dev > (given help from an experienced hand in formatting them!) Maybe that would help, yeah. We have a bunch of people now that start and then give up. They don't port, because they can't be bothered. They just start from scratch. > > A possible solution is that we suggest that people, instead of > > rolling their own thing from scratch, help to port an existing good > > 2.x lib to 3.x, or use 2.x? > > Exactly. Don't give them rose-colored glasses about porting, and warn > that some are just plain broken (eg, because of inappropriate > assumptions about bytes vs Unicode). But on the other hand, some will > mostly work for them, and their bug reports on the corner cases will > be helpful. I think that's usually more effort than new programmers are willing to put in, people tend to underestimate the cost of developing something from scratch in my experience. But sure, we all agree it's a good idea, so let's put it in the official thing about 2.x vs 3.x :) > > I don't think it's a good idea to start encouraging NIH in new > > programmers :-) > > Agreed. I think we're kind of getting into the territory of personal preferences here. Thanks for your input, Laurens _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
