Paul Rubin wrote:
Steve Holden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
It seems to me that IDLE and a lot of the rest of Python are examples of someone having a cool idea and writing a demo, then releasing it with a lot of missing components and rough edges, without realizing that it can't reasonably be called complete without a lot more work.
^Python^open source^
I wouldn't say so. I'd say the Linux kernel, GCC, Emacs, Apache, Mozilla, etc. are all developed with a much more serious attitude than Python is. Of course there are lots of other FOSS programs that someone wrote for their own use and released, that are less polished than Python, but that are also the subject of less advocacy than Python.
Well clearly there's a spectrum. However, I have previously written that the number of open source projects that appear to get stuck somewhere between release 0.1 and release 0.9 is amazingly large, and does imply some dissipation of effort.
Give that there's no overall coordination this is of course inevitable, but some open source projects are doomed from the start to be incomplete because the original authors have never been involved in producing software with a reasonably large user base, and so their production goals and quite often their original specifications (where there are any) are unrealistic.
These projects meander towards a half-assed initial implementation and then become moribund.
This is not to tar respectable projects like Linux, many (but not all) of the Gnu projects, and Python with that same brush, and personally I think the Python *core* is pretty solid and quite well-documented, but I don;t regard IDLE as part of the core myself. Since I'm not an active developer, this may not be in line with python-dev's opinions on the matter.
regards Steve -- Steve Holden http://www.holdenweb.com/ Python Web Programming http://pydish.holdenweb.com/ Holden Web LLC +1 703 861 4237 +1 800 494 3119 -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
