[Python-Dev] Docs of weak stdlib modules should encourage exploration of 3rd-party alternatives (original) (raw)

C. Titus Brown ctb at msu.edu
Tue Mar 13 04:25:49 CET 2012

On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 05:22:45AM +0200, Eli Bendersky wrote:

On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 05:07, R. David Murray <rdmurray at bitdance.com> wrote: > I don't like any of the suggested wordings. ?I have no problem with > us recommending other modules, but most of the Python libraries are > perfectly functional (not "leaky" or some other pejorative), they just > aren't as capable as the wiz-bang new stuff that's available on PyPI. >

+1 to David's comment, and -0 on the proposal as a whole. The suggested wordings are simply offensive to those modules & their maintainers specifically, and to Python generally. Personally, I think an intelligent user should realize that a language's standard library won't provide all the latest and shiniest gadgets. Rather, it will focus on providing stable tools that have withstood the test of time and can serve as a basis for building more advanced tools. That intelligent user should also be aware of PyPI (and the main Python page makes it prominent enough), so I see no reason explicitly pointing to it in the documentation of several modules.

I see the point, but as a reasonably knowledgeable Python programmer (intelligent? who knows...) I regularly discover nifty new modules that "replace" stdlib modules. It'd be nice to have pointers in the docs, although that runs the risk of having the pointers grow stale, too.

--titus

C. Titus Brown, ctb at msu.edu

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