
On Programming Communities - stakent
http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2014/2/13/programming-communities/
======
levosmetalo
I never understood this thing about "communities". It's not like someone marry
a language and a community, and exclusively use only that language for
everything, and then, when some better/newer language comes, divorce from the
"community" not ever to touch it again.

Come, we are all adults. Use the right tool for the job, and belong to many
(or none) communities. Your favorite programming language is not your
identity.

------
lifeisstillgood
What strikes me most about both Ian's history and Armin's is "Starting again".
Rewrites, starting over having learnt more the first time. Yet the idea of
that happening in a commercial setting is ludicrous for almost every company I
have known. Yet perhaps look at Apple's development of the iPhone - a constant
set of retries trying to get past a single Jobs.

It might be important to remember ...

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
> Rewrites, starting over having learnt more the first time. Yet the idea of
> that happening in a commercial setting is ludicrous for almost every company
> I have known.

I am not a commercial setting, I am a programmer. If I would not learn new
things and adapt I would become rather pointless quickly. What's important for
a company is not important for an individual.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
The point I was trying to make was there is very little likelihood of a
company saying "yes, go rewrite your code, start a new project, because you
think it can be done better".

------
arocks
This is a much needed counter-balance to Ian's post. While I can understand
the technology reasons for moving away from Python, the community remains the
most important reason for hanging on to it. I believe, which ever open source
tool one chooses to use, the community should be one of most, if not the most,
important criteria.

------
jessaustin
_Until recently the Python community steered free from controversy..._

What am I missing here? Is this just about version 3?

~~~
jedanbik
Pycon 2013 tweet controversy, presumably.

~~~
jessaustin
Hmmm, I guess that just didn't make such a big impression on me. I mean, the
PyCon people actually tried to do the right thing, even before the fact, and
seemed to handle the situation correctly as it developed. The problems that
resulted were probably due more to flaky personalities and poor judgment on
the part of those personalities' management.

~~~
jedanbik
I think that the problems went deeper than "flaky personalities and poor
judgment on the part of those personalities' management" since Adria continues
to feel/be threatened even a year later:

[https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/432401359090876418](https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/432401359090876418)
[https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/432397068821221376](https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/432397068821221376)
[https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/429362205432090624](https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/429362205432090624)
[https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/426174124474396672](https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/426174124474396672)
[https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/426172318000226304](https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/426172318000226304)
[https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/426169399146319872](https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/426169399146319872)
[https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/426155496555282432](https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/426155496555282432)
[https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/423152997955170304](https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/423152997955170304)
[https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/412426406568919040](https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/412426406568919040)

~~~
jedanbik
I guess that doesn't directly involve python in a technical context, but it is
a notably controversial incident associated with the community.

~~~
jessaustin
Umm, yeah, I probably shouldn't touch that stuff above with a 39.5' pole. What
I meant to say was that although I'm sensitive to everyone's emotions, it
would have been a better result for everyone involved had the two CEOs imposed
a two-week gag order on all parties and then after all us chattering morons
forgot it, issued a joint press release acknowledging the incident and
reporting that all had been resolved to everyone's satisfaction through
private dialogue.

What I should have said instead was that I don't think the python "community"
can really be blamed for it since they actually instituted an anti-harassment
code of conduct before many other conferences and have actively, repeatedly
sought and used input from advocates on this issue.

~~~
jedanbik
Completely agree.

------
frik
A bit off-topic, I would like to view the hype-trend of programming languages
on Google Trends. The new Google Trends interface allows one to search for
"Ruby" the programming language and not Ruby the mineral.

Google Trends - programming languages:

[http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-
US&q=/m/060kv,+/m...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-
US&q=/m/060kv,+/m/06ff5,+/m/02p97,+/m/05zrn&cmpt=q&content=1)

But I have troubles with Python, as the search suggestions show me Python
molurus, Monty Python, Python reticulatus, Burmese python but sadly "Python"
the language is missing. Maybe someone found a solution how to input Python
(the language).

~~~
frik
I got a good trend chart by using the category-filter:

[http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-
US&q=/#cat=0-5&q=...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-
US&q=/#cat=0-5&q=%2Fm%2F060kv%2C%20%2Fm%2F02p97%2C%20%2Fm%2F06ff5%2C%20Python%2C%20%2Fm%2F05zrn&date=1%2F2011%2038m&cmpt=q)

Btw. when I input "Python programming language", I get Java and C++ as
suggestions... funny as Google itself uses Python ;)

~~~
romanovcode
> I get Java and C++ as suggestions... funny as Google itself uses Python ;)

I don't see anything funny here. They use C++ as well and they definitely use
Java a lot more than Python.

~~~
frik
Screenshot:
[http://s18.postimg.org/yl55zwebd/gootrend.png](http://s18.postimg.org/yl55zwebd/gootrend.png)

It's a Google Trends bug, Python (albeit heavily used within Google) is not
recognized as programming language.

------
boothead
I wonder where most people go from python? As has been mentioned in other
threads (specifically the comments on Ian Bicking's recent blog post) many
seem to be moving on. Where are you all going? Personally after having been a
python dev for a long time, I now self identify as a Haskeller (although I'd
certainly still use python for many tasks over Haskell). I find Haskell to be
as mind expanding now as python was when I taught myself to code ~10 years
ago.

I've seen others mention clojure and go as jumping off points. So, those of
you who feel you have "moved on" from python, where would you say you hang
your digital hat nowadays?

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
I think lots of people in the Python community are very good at what they are
doing and just adjust to whatever the new situation requires. There are lots
of Python people that made a move to the JVM after they outgrew their Python
environments. There are many that are now writing lots of Go and JavaScript.

I don't think people "move on", they just also start using more than one
programming language. A few years ago Python + C was all you needed. Now you
need to deal with JavaScript if you want it or not, often there is Ruby
involved because of deployment tools, there is more and more Go code, Java
became popular in the same community etc.

~~~
boothead
Yes, move on wasn't really the right terminology perhaps I really meant
embrace as well :-)

------
pekk
If the tool is just bad then there is no good reason to deal with the
community.

~~~
LeonidasXIV
> If the tool is just bad then there is no good reason to deal with the
> community.

Python is not that bad and while I, like Armin, have been moving slowly away
from it due to a number of reasons, it is still one of the most versatile
tools in my toolbelt.

~~~
whatevsbro
Could you tell me a little about the reasons for moving away from Python? I'm
somewhat surprised by people saying it's a bad technology choice.

~~~
DasIch
It's not a bad technology choice. It's that people themselves evolve, get
interested and learn new things.

Armin apparently is somewhat involved with Rust now, I doubt that's because he
is going to write web application in it but it's because he has become
interested in developing applications that require a low-level language.

Ian Bicking has been working for Mozilla for a while now and Mozilla is very
focused on using Javascript...

Important people in the Python community becoming interested in new things,
learning new things, is not a bad thing, it's a very good thing. You want
people with influence to learn new things, get excited about them. That's what
sparks evolution, new ideas and creativity.

