On Sun, Apr 3, 2011 at 3:21 AM, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: > On Sun, 03 Apr 2011 16:34:34 +1000, Brian Quinlan wrote: > >> On 3 Apr 2011, at 16:22, geremy condra wrote: >>> I think we're talking at cross purposes. The point I'm making is that >>> there are lots of issues where popularity as a third party module isn't >>> really a viable test for whether a feature is sufficiently awesome to >>> be in core python. As part of determining whether I thought it was >>> appropriate in this case I essentially just asked myself whether any of >>> the really good and necessary parts of Python would fail to be >>> readmitted under similar circumstances, and I think the answer is that >>> very few would come back in. To me, that indicates that this isn't the >>> right way to address this issue, although I admit that I lack any solid >>> proof to base that conclusion on. >> >> This has been discussed a few times on python-dev. I think that most >> developers acknowledge that small-but-high-utility modules would not >> survive outside of the core because people would simple recreate them >> rather than investing the time to find, learn and use them. > > That's certainly true for pure Python code, but for a C extension, the > barrier to Do It Yourself will be much higher for most Python coders.
I don't think people will work around it in C. I think they'll grudgingly accept a slow and kludgy python workaround, and more to the point I think they would do that with a vast majority of features at this scale. That's why I say this isn't a good test here- because you could apply it to a great feature or a terrible feature and with overwhelming probability have them fail in both cases. > On the other hand, for a pure Python function or class, you could stick > it on ActiveState's Python cookbook and get some imperfect measure of > popularity and/or usefulness from the comments and votes there. Frankly, I have little trust in this as a measure of popularity. Even PyPI isn't a great indicator, and the numbers you get off of ActiveState are almost certain to be way, way noisier. Geremy Condra -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list