November 29, 2009

Comments or Not? Public or Private? Relevant or Irrelevant?

Recently I heard that some people aren't happy about changes made to PyPi, the Python Package Index. As far as I am aware there is only one person who has been working on that application recently, and that's Martin von Loewis. Martin, last year's winner of the Frank Willison Award, is a Director of the PSF and someone who works tirelessly at various aspects of Python -- many of them not particularly rewarding. As with many open source activities it is (I assume) a labor of love.

Recently Martin updated the Package Index to allow users to leave comments, and it appears that this innovation has been contentious. As a result of the rumblings Martin created a poll to determine whether the feature should continue in its present form or be modified in various ways. Here are the results as at the time of this writing:

Allow ratings and comments on all packages (status quo)



223
Allow package owners to disallow comments (ratings unmodified)



137
Allow comments, but only send them to package owners (ratings unmodified)



33
Disallow comments (ratings unmodified)



24
Disallow ratings and comments (status three months ago)



88

This is all very well, but unfortunately it appears that PyPi is now boxed into a corner. Even if the most popular option is implemented (retaining the current situation, where the newly-added rating and comment feature is allowed on all packages) this guarantees that a majority of those voting will have their favored option rejected. I suppose this demonstrates that you can give people too many choices.

My own discomfort with PyPi goes rather deeper. While I think that it's great that we have a central repository to support setuptools (even though release 0.6 is now three years into its release cycle and onto its eleventh release candidate) and now distribute, I would like to see it become much more usable than it currently is. It would be easy to see this as an attack on the implementers and maintainers (which it is not intended to be: the maintainers of all the software I have mentioned have done valuable work that I could not). Honestly, it isn't.

In reality I think it would be good if they had more help. Particularly the kind of help that let them package the facilities this excellent tool PyPi provides, in a much more obvious way. Even if this means complaining about the way things currently are.

Almost as a side note, I ended up following a twisty little maze of (web) passages all alike which finally led me to the Python issue tracker. Since it showed an apparently remembered login name and password I assumed all I had to do was click the Login button and all would be well, but apparently not. So I did what any user would do, and followed the Lost your login? link.

Alas, neither my email address nor my user name was recognized on that page, so I decided the only thing I could do was to register an account (even though I know I have submitted bugs in the past). So I went through the registration process only to be presented with the following unhelpful message:


OK, so what the heck is all that about? How am I now supposed to proceed if by chance I have burning information about a bug in the Python system? I have said before, and I will say again, that as an interface between Python's users and its developers the issue tracker sucks. I am sure it is very useful for the developers, but as an input collection mechanism it seems to be only slightly less valuable than a customer service desk staffed only by a notice reading "go away" (I am exaggerating for dramatic effect here).

[Edit: this was apparently a bug, which has now been fixed at least for the Python bug tracker.]

I suspect that what is needed here is the e-mail equivalent of a help desk, where people with no knowledge of the infrastructure can exchange messages with a team of real human beings who know what the score is and can make any necessary inputs to the issue tracking system on their behalf. Call them user proxies, if you like. I am aware that in the high-tech world of open source this may be seen as a heresy, but people still have their uses, dammit, and they clamor to be useful even as the capitalist world declares them redundant by the hundreds of thousands.

Now I know before I post it that some people are not going to like this article: they will either say that I shouldn't be complaining if I'm not prepared to fix what I'm complaining about, or that I should not be making a noise about something that third parties will use as evidence that the Python world is in some sort of disarray. Frankly I don't buy either of those arguments.

The Python world has recently gone through a long-drawn-out and extremely energetic discussion about increasing the diversity of the community. As an existing community we are fighting an uphill battle, because it's even more difficult to change the constituency of existing communities than it is to recruit a diverse mix to new ones. Just the same this has had some very positive results, not least the publication of a diversity statement that I think the Python Software Foundation has every right to be proud of -- it might seem like a simple piece of text, but it was a hard-won development that even cost us the resignation of a member.

Yet despite all that work, we apparently haven't yet got to the stage where the Python community includes people who can look at a less-than-optimal interface and say out loud "we need to do something about this". I don't know if this is because we are too close to PyPi to be able to acknowledge its faults, or because people fear hostile responses if they make negative comments about the infrastructure, or (perhaps most likely) because they don't want to offend those who have invested their time and effort into producing something, at least, which is more than most of us do. I do know that it frustrates the hell out of me.

So let me put a public stake in the ground here. I have visited a number of local Python user groups in the past year (the first PSF chairman to do so, as far as I can tell). Almost everyone I have spoken to along the above lines has been enthusiastic about making things better, and willing to volunteer to help make the necessary improvements. So now I need to hear from the broader Python community about what's "wrong" (less pejoratively: what we should change to make things better). This means you.

The Python Software Foundation is currently looking quite critically at next year's activities and the budget to support those activities. If we are going to make a real difference to the perception of Python and to its adoption as a serious IT solution to a broad range of problems then we need broad involvement from the whole community, not just the PSF membership. I am investigating a number of ways in which the PSF could encourage a broader involvement, and it would be helpful at this point if there were general evidence of a desire by non-members to get more involved in Python: not just its development, but its community.

If this piece isn't enough to get a decent discussion going then I suppose I should just resign as PSF chairman and look elsewhere for a community that gives a damn. I honestly don't think that will be what I need to do. I'm really hoping you guys don't let me down here.

November 20, 2009

Starting 2010 With a Bang

Holden Web's first one-day workshop was, thanks to Jacob Kaplan Moss, a sell-out success. As a result, and partially due to some excellent feedback from the New York City Python Meetup group, we will be running the same workshop in New York on January 22, again with Jacob presenting. We are also offering a one-day IronPython workshop presented by Michael Foord on January 21.

Since the three-day Introduction to Python classes have been well-received in Virginia we are also offering that class in New York on January 18-20.

To try and make things easier for those attending and smooth out our administration we are using Eventbrite for the first time. I would really like to know how easy people find it to get information about our classes and to enroll for them. Anyone wanting specific information not mentioned in the course outlines is, of course, welcome to contact us for further details.

If you would like to take one of these classes simply follow the links above (or click here for a list of all our current offerings, then just go to the ones you are interested in) and click the Order Now button which should be clearly visible. Once you have entered the details click the Review Your Order button, and you have fifteen minutes to check that you have entered the correct information before you click the Pay Now button. It really couldn't be much easier, I hope.

We are also very interested to know what other event you would like us to run. This is the front end of a new venture for Holden Web, and your opinions and requirements (places you'd like to attend presentations as well as other topics) will help us to move in the right direction. So feel free to contact us with your suggestions, or make them in comments below. Thanks in advance for the feedback.

November 17, 2009

Two Thousand Posts Behind

While recording material for the first three episodes of a new Python podcast (you'll have to wait*) I realized that I've been less in contact with the doings of the Python community than usual over the last six months, due to project and teaching work.

When I am in "less busy" mode and have some spare time I often follow the comp.lang.python newsgroup, offering advice and opinion when the occasion allows. I also find the time to track the Planet Python newsfeed, which is full of interesting (and often detailed) information about what various Python personalities have been up to. When I get busy, as I have been this year, those information sources tend to take a background role.

I just started on the task of "catching up" with Planet Python, and have had to recognize that there is no way I am going to. There have been over two thousand posts since the start of June this year, and I just don't have the time to run through it all -- particularly not if I want to follow up all the interesting stuff I see. In the first minute of examination I saw details of an IronPython application that allows you to examine .NET binary assemblies and instantiate the various classes you come across, interacting with them through an interactive console.

This was interesting because it's been one of the reasons many Java shops keep Jython in their toolkit. Java is also a compiled language not an interactive one, and so it's difficult to learn about the tools without going through an intensive "write/run/debug" cycle that makes it difficult to condense your experience into learned material. With Jython you just use the interactive Python interpreter, creating instances as you like, calling their methods and examining their attributes. "Plays well with others" has always been one of Python's strengths.

Anyway, suffice it to say that there's been some amazing stuff going on in the Python ecosphere recently. I am really looking forward to next year's PyCon (February, in Atlanta). There were so many great proposals that even with an expansion from four tracks to five there wasn't room to accommodate all the stuff that could have gone in. So expect some pretty amazing Open Space sessions too!

* Provisionally entitled "A Little Bit of Python"