Guido van Rossum: Thoughts about Python Future

[dododo]

the article mentions a python implementation of CSP which is here

http://code.google.com/p/pycsp/

Invented by the same guy that brought us quicksort, CSP is actually a really nice framework for describing interacting processes. It's used a lot in formal proofs of correctness of programs, so it's nice to see real-world implementation with such clear syntax. (Of course, Go uses the same formalism, as opposed to Actors that are used by Erlang/Scala/etc.)

[ralph]

For a good summary of this whole area, see Russ Cox's http://swtch.com/~rsc/thread/ page.

[hugs]

Here's a link to the monocle project that Guido mentioned: http://github.com/saucelabs/monocle

[j_baker]

On precursory first glance, I don't see anything that isn't done via twisted. Why would I use this as opposed to twisted's inlineCallbacks?

This isn't a rhetorical question either. I really want to know what the benefits are.

[equark]

How would PEP 380 improve Monocle style programming?

http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0380/

I don't have enough experience to really understand.

[jerome_etienne]

About Commit privileges, using distributed version control system would help reduce the fear of commit.

[jcsalterego]

Speaking of DVCS, Mercurial was chosen at PyCon 2009, although the implementation timeline appears TBD.

http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0374/#decision

http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0385/

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2009-March/08793...

[JoachimSchipper]

Why? The "main" git repository is as important as the "main" Subversion repository. git is easier to work with for distributed development, but whatever is branded Python still shouldn't suck.

[callahad]

s/commit privileges/push privileges/g

From what I understand, a lot of the uncertainty isn't about committing, per se, but rather about changing the canonical repository.

[nailer]

OT: Reminder to develop a quick JS bookmarket to fix unnecessary monospace apps like mailman - Readability doesn't work. Assuming an 80 character wide display was dumb 10 years ago, it's even worse now we have mobile web.

[JoachimSchipper]

[Still OT] There's a good reason for mailman being monospace: quite a few mailing lists see ASCII diagrams now and then.

[njharman]

Read more carefully. They weren't his predictions on hardware architecture.

And from my reading he's saying "(hopefully) we don't need no stinking multi-threading cause multiprocessing will be how it's done".

[agentultra]

Guido stepping down from his dictator role? What will the fanboys do?

Sounds like the community is growing up. It's good news for Python developers (and people who write Python for a living).

[kaens]

Guido has been talking about retiring from the dictator role for a bit now.

I think that the language is in a spot where it's got a dedicated enough and competent enough community to move on from the "GVR as benevolent dictator" model of development without sacrificing much. The language and its community is indeed maturing -- in fact, it's one of the most mature communities around in my experience, at least in the "scripting" language world.

I think the future is pretty bright for Python. It's not a language that is breaking ridiculous new ground or anything, but it has a nice balance of readability, power, and a fairly sane standard library, which makes it my (and many others) go-to language for a lot of tasks.

[studer]

Guido has never been that kind of "dictator". Sounds you haven't really been paying attention...