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

Eli Bendersky eliben at gmail.com
Tue Mar 13 04:42:55 CET 2012

On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 05:25, C. Titus Brown <ctb at msu.edu> wrote:

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.

Exactly. It's not the job of the core developers to keep track of the latest and greatest gadgets and to diligently update the docs when something new comes out. Note that "the latest and coolest" changes frequently, so this may mean different "recommendations" between 3.x.y and 3.x.y+1, which is even more confusing.

Wasn't a PyPI recommendation / voting system discussed a while ago? That would be much more appropriate than officially endorsing specific modules by pointing to them in the standard documentation.

Eli

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