AFAIK the term comes from a piece by Andrew Kuchling titled "Python warts". The topic now has its own wiki page: https://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonWarts
I believe that most of the warts are not even design missteps -- they are emergent misfeatures, meaning nobody could have predicted how things would work out. On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 5:09 PM, Brett Cannon <br...@python.org> wrote: > > > On Thu, 12 Jan 2017 at 15:22 Random832 <random...@fastmail.com> wrote: > >> On Thu, Jan 12, 2017, at 17:39, Brett Cannon wrote: >> > On Wed, 11 Jan 2017 at 20:56 Simon Lovell <simon58...@bigpond.com> >> wrote: >> > > I don't know what is meant by some insults having been thrown in. >> > > Calling truthiness of non boolean data "Ugly" is an insult? It is >> ugly. >> > >> > Now *that *is insulting to me. Once again, you are allowed to disagree >> > and >> > say you don't like how truthiness is handled in Python, but you flat-out >> > stating something is ugly insults all the time and effort that me and >> the >> > other core developers have put into Python to try and make it the best >> > language we can with the constraints we have to work within. >> >> Just out of curiosity... in your estimation, what is a "wart", and why >> is the term "wart" used for it? > > > That term has been used since before I got involved in Python so I don't > know its history. To me, a "wart" is a design misstep; there were reasons > at the time for the design but it has not held up as necessarily the best > decision. So to me "wart" is not as bad as "ugly" as it tacitly > acknowledges circumstances were quite possibly different back then and > 20/20 hindsight is not something we have when making a decision. As a > community we have collectively agreed some things are warts in Python > because enough people over time have shared the opinion that something was > a design misstep. > > >> I mean, this is an accepted term that >> the Python community uses to refer to things, that is not generally >> regarded to be cause for an accusation of personally insulting anyone, >> right? I haven't stepped into an alternate universe? > > > You're focusing on the word and not how the word was presented. The fact > that Simon started his email with a blanket statement basically saying his > ideas were great and right automatically shows arrogance. And then > continuing to say that something is ugly matter-of-factly just continued on > that theme. I can normally mentally insert an "I think" phrase for people > when they make a blanket statement like that when the rest of the email was > reasonable, but the posturing of the email as a whole just didn't all for > that. > > We can argue what adjective or noun could have been used forever, but the > fact that it was delivered as if in judgment over those who put the time > and effort to make the decision all those years ago doesn't ever feel good > to the people being judged and ridiculed (and I know this can seem small, > but as one of the people being judged regularly I can attest that the > constant ridicule contributes to burnout). > > _______________________________________________ > Python-ideas mailing list > Python-ideas@python.org > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas > Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/ > -- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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