On Fri, Apr 18, 2014 at 12:55 PM, Paul Moore <p.f.mo...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 18 April 2014 16:58, Nick Coghlan <ncogh...@gmail.com> wrote: >> As part of thrashing out the respective distribution ecosystem roles >> of pip and conda (still a work in progress), we're at least converging >> on the notion that there are actually now *two* main ways of consuming >> Python: as a "software integrator" (the way most of us have >> traditionally consumed it, and the way that dominates most project >> documentation outside the scientific Python community) and as an "end >> user" (the way Linux system administrators have long consumed it, and >> the way scientists, financial analysts and folks just learning Python >> are likely best off consuming it). >> >> Making these different personas explicit is a process that has barely >> begun (this email is mostly based on some conversations I had in >> person at PyCon and via email during the sprints), but here's the gist >> (based on listing examples): > > Interesting perspective. However, I'm not convinced it's complete. > Specifically, there's one group of people who I encounter relatively > often, who don't seem to me to fit well into either category you're > proposing. That is, (Windows in my experience, but maybe Linux as > well) users who want to write "simple scripts" and for whom batch > files or similar are not sufficient. Such people typically don't have > the sort of "single application area" focus that your "end user" > category seems to imply, but on the other hand they don't really fit > the "software integrators" role in the sense of necessarily being > comfortable setting up their own development environment. > > I worry that your classification risks ignoring that group (maybe > because Unix users are well served with other alternatives than Python > for this type of task, or because on Unix "use the system Python" is > the right answer). > > Your list of "end user" targeted distributions seem to be limited to: > > - Linux distribution vendors > - Vendors focused on the essentially scientific community (in the > broadest sense) > - Embedded Python > > That's very far from being complete coverage of all the people *I'd* > like to be able to recommend Python to. Specifically, unless we're not > interested in "generic" Windows users, I think we need to offer *some* > form of equivalent of the OS-packaged Python on Linux for Windows > users. That's what the python.org builds, plus pip, wheels and PyPI, > give for Windows users now. Hmm, if we assume that supporting that > remains a priority, is what you're really saying that we *don't* try > to extend that to work for Linux/OSX, as doing so competes with the OS > vendors - but rather we see python.org binaries and binary > infrastructure like wheels as being focused on the Windows user > experience? > > (I wish I'd been at PyCon, this would have been a very interesting > discussion to have face to face. Email isn't ideal for this...)
One more group that I find interesting is application users. These people should not need to notice that Python is in use at all, in contrast to the "build a virtualenv / install / pass through fire and death / use" workflow that is sometimes promoted. They are well served by good tools that make single-file zip distributions or py2exe etc. from a collection of wheels or sdists. Application users are using Python because a best-in-class program is written in Python and not because a Python program integrates better with other Python libraries. Conda is interesting because it is a system package manager, except it installs everything into what they sometimes describe as "C-level virtualenvs" rather than /. They've come up with a design that works well with Python programs but isn't particularly Python-specific at all. _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
