[Python-Dev] Python ROCKS! Thanks guys! [anecdote] (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Thu Oct 13 00:31:32 EDT 2016

Thanks for passing this feedback along, Chris! It's always wonderful to see developers feeling empowered by the potential that open source tools offer them.

On 13 October 2016 at 11:01, Ryan Gonzalez <rymg19 at gmail.com> wrote:

Poor students... ;)

Folks, as tempting as it may be to make jokes at the expense of other programming languages, please try to ensure that references to them on the core Python lists are formulated on the basis of "What can we learn from their experiences?", rather than as generic putdowns of entire software development ecosystems. Even as a lighthearted joke (as here), it isn't helpful to the design process to categorise programming languages as being generically "better" or "worse" than each other, rather than seeing them as embodiments of different ways of thinking about algorithmic problem solving.

In combination with the W3C HTML5 and CSS standardisation work, the JavaScript community have put together a superb set of tools for creating user interfaces that are independent of the backend API server implementation language, as well as useful tools for remote data access and data transformation pipelines. The fact that all this work is being done in the open and made freely available as open source software means that the Python community is able to benefit from these capabilities as much as anyone.

Regards, Nick.

P.S. If anyone would like more background on why the "Our language is universally better than your language" approach can be problematic (even in jest!), please take a look at Aurynn Shaw's piece on Contempt Culture in programming communities and the barriers that can create to effective collaboration: http://blog.aurynn.com/contempt-culture

There's also my own http://www.curiousefficiency.org/posts/2015/10/languages-to-improve-your-python.html which looks at some other ways in which dismissing ecosystems out of hand can inhibit our ability to learn from both their mistakes and their successes.

-- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan at gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia

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