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nedbat

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Yes, it could use more funding. Glad to see that Anthropic is helping. It's still not an either/or situation. The PSF would not be fulfilling their mission if they only funded packaging until packaging was "solved" (whatever that might mean) and only then did they fund outreach.

I'm not sure how you got to "before" here. The PSF runs PyPI, organizes the Python Packaging Authority, supports sprints and standardization efforts, funds developers in residence and so on. Packaging is improving, partly because of those efforts. It's not an either/or.

Is it so hard to imagine that they do it because the PSF's work is important and they want to support them? All the AI labs depend hugely on the Python ecosystem and infrastructure. Startups burning cash spend on many things that are important to them.

Just to clarify: the NSF grant was refused because it required the PSF to abandon all DEI efforts, not just that the grant itself couldn't be used for DEI. Accepting the NSF grant would have required the PSF to forgo one of its core principles. It was the right decision, not bad management.

The Best Essay 2 years ago

I don't know if it looks different, or what it looks different from. To me, it looks like it was designed in 1999 (which it may have been).

I was reacting to someone literally saying, "Everyone should learn C because it teaches you how computers really work." In my experience it's no an uncommon recommendation. Yes, people also say, "learning C can be a great experience," and I agree.

Python itself only has one kind of argument passing (neither by-value or classic C++ by-reference), and nothing is copied. Library functions could make confusing choices, it's true.

My point wasn't that C wasn't hardware friendly. My point was that it doesn't teach you "how a computer really works". It teaches you a lower-level abstraction than Python does, but it's still an abstraction, and there's a ton of mechanisms at work that you can't see.

More like, you probably don't need to know about spark plugs, unless you want to fix your own car.

The point of the post is that abstractions are inevitable and you choose your own level. And: you can be a great programmer without knowing C.

Sure, I never said it was irrelevant or a waste of time. It can be useful and interesting. It's just not necessary, and it doesn't tell you how computers really work.

One reason to learn C is to grasp the basic syntax and control structures that it shares with many languages in the same family.

Why not just learn the language that you want to learn?