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On a python developers' mailing list for the core developers, Python Committers, Benevolent Dictator for Life Guido van Rossum has announced that he is stepping down effective immediately and with out appointing a successor.
Now that PEP 572 is done, I don't ever want to have to fight so hard for a
PEP and find that so many people despise my decisions.I would like to remove myself entirely from the decision process. I'll
still be there for a while as an ordinary core dev, and I'll still be
available to mentor people -- possibly more available. But I'm basically
giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL, and you all will be on
your own.After all that's eventually going to happen regardless -- there's still
that bus lurking around the corner, and I'm not getting younger... (I'll
spare you the list of medical issues.)I am not going to appoint a successor.
[...] I'll still be here, but I'm trying to let you all figure something out for
yourselves. I'm tired, and need a very long break.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13 2018, @02:26PM (21 children)
The replacement will have to be at least female for PC reasons. She can start giving away any capital to "women in tech" orgs, while some guy under her can deal with the nerds.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13 2018, @02:43PM (2 children)
And if they all quit, then maybe this shitty language will finally get the burial it deserves. Dynamic typing and semantic white space are signs that the "designer" of a language shouldn't be allowed to write with anything other than crayons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13 2018, @08:05PM (1 child)
Gee, I wonder why "nerds" get such a bad rap? Hmmmm, if only there were a clue!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 14 2018, @02:06PM
And yet you can't actually say that I'm wrong. This is the internet, not some safe space, if you can't handle the fact that somebody is being called out for the massively idiotic decisions they've made, then perhaps you shouldn't be out in public.
People hate nerds for all sorts of reasons, but it's morons like you that take the cake. Python is a crappy language and really should be replaced by any number other languages for teaching beginning programmers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13 2018, @02:50PM (1 child)
I may not mind being that guy, if she doesn't weigh half a ton.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by realDonaldTrump on Friday July 13 2018, @03:58PM
Don't fall in love with a big, fat pig named @Rosie [twitter.com]. She's a mental midget, a low-life!!
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13 2018, @03:52PM (5 children)
I have two point five competing theories (both may involve lizard people, as necessary, without exceeding 0.1 standard timecubes, but flat Earth and weather war may not be applicable) --
1a. #gamergate and the misogynerd narrative were part of a cynical attempt to drive D team vote for the 2016 election. It failed, because the D team did not anticipate how many working class women were alienated by the past 40 years of wealth transfer from the working class to the elites.
1b. #gamergate and the misogynerd narrative were propaganda promulgated by the CIA (including COINTELPRO) designed to convince the public of the acceptability of internet censorship. It would eventually morph into #metoo (using classical McCarthyite tactics, and this is not the first time such tactics have been used against artists in the past 100 years, possibly beginning with Charlie Chaplin iirc or thereabouts) and #fakenews with the pressure on popular internet destinations such as Facebook to become propaganda arms of the CIA and tools to suppress working class organization.
2. The misogynerd narrative (excluding #gamergate this time) was an outlet of pent-up anger among working class women, misdirected and betrayed by identity politics.
The silver lining to this shitshow is that the D team cannot last in its present feckless form. The DSA gives hope, but we must be aware of the involvement of lizard people at the highest levels. On the other hand, the danger is that working class anger may turn into reactionary sentiment among women and result in a fourth wave of pseudo-feminism that is all but explicitly anti-feminist. (Don't shoot the messenger here if the reader is a woman who has confused her personal progressive philosophical and political views for the views of all women. Instead demonstrate using polling data and sociological methods that my reading of working class women is flawed.)
Hopefully this anger can be directed towards meaningful socialist causes (including free software, which is inherently feminist software by its fundamental nature, even if many feminists do not yet realize it) that can remedy the underlying sickness that gave rise (both in the media and on the ground) to the misogynerd narrative.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13 2018, @04:02PM (2 children)
Why do you bother posting this anonymously when it's clear you're whatserface our resident crazy trans person
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13 2018, @05:46PM (1 child)
And yet I get modded up for similar points when I do not include phrases such as those.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13 2018, @07:48PM
because you don't sound like a crazy person when you don't use crazy phrases
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Friday July 13 2018, @05:34PM (1 child)
the misogynerd narrative...
Or maybe some folks just read some of the comments on sites like this...
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 14 2018, @04:33AM
DeathMonkey, how many times have you been "asked" by an employer to "train" a womyn in programming who had no aptitude for it whatsoever? What if a vendor outright lied about the capabilities of their product to your employer?
A unexpected mother who hadn't paid attention in math class since kindergarten? I've tried it. Guess what? Programming is a mathematical discipline. Somebody who would much rather be retired, spending time with her large family, and is instead being forced to work due to the systematic theft of wealth from the working class facilitated by policies that the DNC supports? Guess what? One requires something other than the slavedriver's whip of capitalism over her head to learn programming. I risk mentioning them because they at least quickly understood they were in over their heads, it was not something they wanted to do, and the vendor was full of shit.
Now add in high turnover, and this is something I frequently had the opportunity to do.
Now you will proceed from the assumption that I have not demonstrated capability of mentoring a person who possess a womb in programming, thus indicating some problem with my bathroom mirror. Well, I have demonstrated that capability. In fact, you'll never believe it, but I even helped her report one of her (male) supervisors for sexual harassment simply because it was the right thing to do. She must have had at least some measure of trust in me to even talk to me about it. Head exploding yet?
You will not understand why right now, but it will become apparent to you with sufficient hindsight in a decade or two that it was this exact hubris and dismissal of authentic, lived experience that was responsible for Trump and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. You simply refuse to listen. Perhaps when Roe v. Wade is overturned you will begin listening, but it is doubtful.
You are an apologist and enabler for women who can't even overcome their reactionary attitudes for long enough to keep their beloved music festival open [michfest.com]. And MWMF is only one example of the many diverse flavors of reactionary attitudes held by women. Another attitude some have is taking the epistemological position of silence, completely rejecting the idea that the world is knowable. Others find the epistemological position of received knowledge the most comfortable; men will tell them what to think, and they will think, "Trump! Trump! Trump!" And the polling data proves this empirically.
Do you understand that reactionary feminists are vocal and not shy about physical confrontation? D you understand what it's like being cornered and physically intimidated in a place of work by people who are taller than you? Do you understand what it's like being sexually harassed, repeatedly, without having any power to stop it? Do you even understand what it is like when somebody physically stronger than you forcefully grabs you and attempts to fondle your breasts in order to sexually humiliate you?
No, I don't think you do. Let me guess. You find the idea a turn-on and you're getting hard just thinking about it, thus committing a basic error of chauvinism in your analysis. Chauvinism causes the error of believing that a sexual harassment victim secretly enjoyed it, and it causes you to sympathize with the abuser because you fundamentally do not understand why the victim would ever object to such a thing in the first place. At least we have established that DeathMonkey is a male chauvinist who cannot imagine thinking with an organ other than his WJC.
I think I have enough experience with women to dismiss your concern. Maybe you should get out of your mother's basement some time and meet some women face to face.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday July 13 2018, @03:58PM (9 children)
The curious thing here is that you seem to have reached the conclusion that women who are really good at programming cannot possibly exist. I can tell you from experience that they definitely do, but you may have to leave your mom's basement to find them.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13 2018, @05:33PM (3 children)
I've been told four leaf clovers exist too, but I've only ever seen them in pictures.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13 2018, @05:44PM
Yeah, nah, the advice still stands - get out of your mum basement
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 14 2018, @02:09PM (1 child)
4 leaf clovers are relatively common, there's one in most patches of clover. You just have to have an efficient way of identifying them when the leaflets are in different orientations or overlapping each other.
5 leaf clovers though are pretty rare, I've only seen a couple of those over the years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 14 2018, @07:45PM
If the percentage of 4 leaved clovers is between 5-10% of population, that would match about the percentage of (capable) technical women. Or women in garbage collection. Or men in nursing (but I have a feeling there's more there).
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13 2018, @06:49PM (2 children)
There might even be a few of those on this board. GP may not even need to risk venturing into the ambient ultraviolet radiation!
Both you and GP miss the point. The whole thing was about a lack women in the board rooms of tech companies.
However, if it caused reactionary feminists in the working class to blame their lack of advancement on male working class programmers and vice versa (perhaps GP blames feminism of all kinds for his lack of advancement), that is a welcome bonus.
I hope that this insanity will find resolution as the working class realizes the fraud of identity politics (including white nationalism) and the need to organize.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13 2018, @09:31PM (1 child)
Not at all. It was about GvR leaving, and the coming power struggle. In my opinion the politicians in the Python community will push for a woman to be head, that woman will probably *not* be one of the technical kind, but a politician herself. And the community will then proceed down the same path Mozilla and Gnome have taken.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by jmorris on Saturday July 14 2018, @02:12AM
This will happen because the tech nerd types will be evaluating on tech nerd things, make loud pronoucements that they want to "stay above politics", get divided and the SJWs will merely see a free resource up for grabs, solidify behind one "diverse" candidate, hurl charges of misogyny, homophobia or racism as appropriate to ensure little competition and seize the resource. Tech ability or even basic competence mean nothing to politicians, which is what an SJW is. If you think they have a CoC now, wait. And yea any monetary resources will be instantly diverted to Social Justice "Diversity" initiatives but the big "win" will be capture of a large and central resource to use as a weapon to extract more power and resources from other tech organizations with.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13 2018, @08:23PM
But you'll also have to brush your teeth, wipe your bottom properly, wash under your armpits and refrain from staring at their breasts.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13 2018, @09:50PM
A woman appeared before the Lord and proclaimed,
"I am a programmer. Let those who would dwell in basements come forth to greet me!"
And the Lord replied, "It shall not come to pass,"
"for I have seen that you are a programmer, and you now must join with your brethen in the basements."