There's a fine line between excessive and helpful communications, and it's different for every person.
Hopefully we'll be able to be more intelligent about this to accommodate your preferences, but for now we're building for to empowering our customers to decide how to engage their users.
There's some truth to this. I think folks on Hacker News and in the Tech space broadly ought to remind themselves that they are power users, and their preferences are not representative of all users.
That's the vision, though it's not quite where we're at today. Once users have the option to subscribe to updates in the ways they want, and for the specific kinds of updates they want, we'll be in a much better place.
Because most of these utilities were created to build things, and contributing to the stdlib has never been on one of those critical paths?
But really, @marmaduke's got it right. The standard library has a MUCH higher barrier to entry than PyPI. Have you seen python-ideas [1]? I truly do not have time to have it out with some of the more vocal elements of that group.
But, down the list:
- OMD might be a good fit for the collections module, I've chatted about it a bit with Raymond Hettinger on and off. He wasn't totally against it, so that's something!
- Exponential backoff is too opinionated for itertools, and generally a lot more high-level and conceptually modern than the rest of Python's built-in networking facilities.
- remap: I really like it, even though I'm typically not a big fan of functional programming in Python. But the Python devs are even less appreciative than I, with GvR disliking lambdas, and Py3 dropping reduce() from the builtins. Plus after years of watching Python core dev, it doesn't seem like the people with the time to work on core Python have much time left over to work with IRL complex APIs and other sources of dynamic nested data?
- Atomic file saving probably should go in the stdlib, but probably not relying on ctypes (on Windows) and I'm not going to pull out my old Windows laptop again just to start writing C.
- Traceback utilities: Probably the one I wish I had time to push for most. traceback's string-only approach feels really dated in the structured-logging age. I'd expect a lot of FUD around messing with error handling.
Maybe now that boltons is pretty popular it's worth giving it a go just to see what lies beyond the typical listserv response: "put it on PyPI and if it's popular, we'll see" :)
In addition to the other reply, there's often a reluctance -- on the part of both the Python core team and the developers of popular third-party code -- to add things to the standard library, since doing so ties you to Python's development process and release cycle. This is one reason why pip is not in the standard library, for example (instead, Python ships a module which will go get pip for you); it needs the ability to develop and release at its own pace and on its own terms.
I'm not sure I agree with Steve that Google is 100% competitor focused. Yes, there are lots of fast-follows, but the fast-follows are innovative (such as Google Home), and the PM teams definitely focus more on user research than on competitive research. I mean, Google didn't exactly invent the Search Engine...
I do however believe that it is increasingly difficult at Google to enter new markets as an individual contributor. Nearly all new products require executive support before they can be meaningfully commenced. There are definitely increasingly strict controls on any public releases (even silent ones) centered around protecting the Google brand.
It kinda seems like Yegge was ready to move on and created post-hoc rationalization for it that was too broadly sweeping.
I also don't think the fetishization around innovation is really that useful. It's an ill-defined and abused buzzword.
What's innovative about Google Home? Every component of it, Home itself (Echo), the Home mini (Echo Tap), etc. are all clones of products that already existed. It doesn't do anything particularly better than it's competitors, and in many cases performs worse, including issues like embarrassingly incorrect answers, killing Wi-Fi networks, accidentally recording all voice even when it's not supposed to...
Google Home is the exact embodiment of a "me too" product. And it's not even a good one.
