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Re: The node.js Community is Quietly Changing the Face of Open Source

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  Re: The node.js Community is Quietly Changing the Face of Open Source Terry Jan Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2013-04-16 13:42 -0400
    Re: The node.js Community is Quietly Changing the Face of Open Source rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-04-16 21:22 -0700

#43692 — Re: The node.js Community is Quietly Changing the Face of Open Source

On 4/16/2013 12:02 PM, Rodrick Brown wrote:
> I came across this article which sums up some of the issues I have with
> modern programming languages. I've never really looked at Javascript for
> anything serious or Node itself but I found this article really
> informational.
>
> "The “Batteries included” philosophy of Python was definitely the right
> approach during the mid 90’s and one of the reasons that I loved Python
> so much; this was a time before modern package management, and before it
> was easy to find and install community-created libraries.  Nowadays

Python gets used in places like corporations and schools where one 
cannot simply install stuff off the net, but must fill out a form asking 
permission, or maybe not ask at all.

> though I think it’s counter-productive.  Developers in the community
> rarely want to bother trying to compete with the standard library, so
> people are less likely to try to write libraries that improve upon it."

Except that there is competition for many modules. That said, there are 
old modules that probably would not be added today, and some the dev 
would like to remove. (Some were for 3.0.)

> http://caines.ca/blog/programming/the-node-js-community-is-quietly-changing-the-face-of-open-source/

The irony is that the author goes on to say that the node.js community 
'works' because they all use the same infrastructure battery: git and 
git-hub ;-).

--
Terry Jan Reedy

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#43727

On Apr 16, 10:42 pm, Terry Jan Reedy <tjre...@udel.edu> wrote:
> > "The “Batteries included” philosophy of Python was definitely the right
> > approach during the mid 90’s and one of the reasons that I loved Python
> > so much; this was a time before modern package management, and before it
> > was easy to find and install community-created libraries.  Nowadays
>
> Python gets used in places like corporations and schools where one
> cannot simply install stuff off the net, but must fill out a form asking
> permission, or maybe not ask at all.

Yes I agree. Different healthy organisms are healthy based on
different logic/laws. Python has no reason to follow node. [And the
Roderick link is obviously a bit of a rant and a polemic]  In
particular one of the strongest (for me) features of python is the
standard library.  Recently I have been working with erlang and every
so often when scratching my head against some impenetrable
documentation, I would find myself saying: "God bless Guido for the
python-docs"

So, no, I am not critical of the std-lib.

My wish is for a slightly larger perspective.  Think of 3 concentric
circles:
1. Python the language
2. Python std lib
3. Python 3rd party packages (that use 1 and 2)

1 and 2 are fine. And for any one person or small group to be fully
conversant of the whole of 3 is unreasonable.
However the surrounding infrastructure needed to populate/explore/use
3 could do with some love:

- the distutils/distutils2/distribute/setuptools situation combined
with pip and pypi
- executable building (py2exe)
- handling multiple pythons and packages eg virtualenv
- tox and the various alternatives to testing

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