The real question is how did Python avoid the toxicity of the Linux or bitcoin dev community (remember the block size debate?)
Though there was a developer who was forced to quit a while ago.
The real question is how did Python avoid the toxicity of the Linux or bitcoin dev community (remember the block size debate?)
Though there was a developer who was forced to quit a while ago.
It didn't. I've seen people in the Python community tear someone's open source project to shreds because "it isn't Pythonic". It really soured me on the Python community when I saw people acting that way.
It actually did, all the way until it got so mainstream in the web world that avoiding drama became basically impossible.
Until the "cool kids" started meddling, it was a lovely village. It had a strong focus on beginners and teachers.
this summarizes pretty well my first thoughts when reading the headline: "How python grew from a language to a community", because the Python community in 2000, the Python community in 2010, these are a different place to "whole world uses Python" in 2025.
Back then it felt like a bit of a club, one that forms around a common hobby. Nowadays it feels more like the "community" of a high-school graduation class. Sure there is community there, but its mostly one of folks randomly thrown together into classrooms.
Folks like Raymond Hettinger would today be totally drowned out in the listicle-style attention seeking times.
> in the web world
I would put that more broadly though, it was web, data-science, there was a point when it became the universal scripting language, and part of me kind of hoped that the crowd would move to nodejs for all of it, so that Python can become more peaceful again. But I guess there is no going back, we went from dinghi to cruise ship, and when the crowd leaves, it will just be a deserted cruise ship.
The folks at the German python forum were very friendly to beginners and even answered the ‘dumb’ questions back then. Don’t know how it is today.
Yeah, like most (maybe all) communities, Pythonistos can be pretty toxic if you're not in the in-group.
Python is one of the most toxic communities out there. A couple of people sold out python-dev to their corporations and used the CoC and non-programming related activities to gain power. They drove people out who dared to contradict them.
Some of the clique have been fired later and now CPython is basically a hollow shell with some corporate projects still going on.
This is completely bonkers.
The Python community is welcoming, many come for the language and stay for the community. It's not, of course, free of politics or drama, but it's very far from what you describe. Local communities are very strong, CPython core community seems to always be trying to improve to me.
Even Tim Peters, who I really hope is part of the documentary, is an enthusiastic participant, both helping with gnarly CPython issues and providing assistance to newbies.
If you look at the Fellows list[0], you can see that many important names aren't active in the community anymore (I don't know the reasons for each one), but many more are either active or in (very) good terms with the community.
The CoC was and is a net positive, the diversity efforts even more so. Last Saturday I was at a local Python conference and the local community has welcome both, to great success and improvement.
[0] https://www.python.org/psf/fellows-roster/
> The CoC was and is a net positive, the diversity efforts even more so
By what measures?
Who sold it out?
I think the Bitcoin part is simple - it doesn't have the perverse incentives of an investment vehicle. Everyone's financial stake is indirect and diffuse, it's not likely that any given PEP is directly connected to a developer's bottom line (though presumably this happens occasionally).
Big companies submit PEPs to force their will on Python. Meta and GIL removal.
Who is pro-GIL...?
The point is that, unlike in the Bitcoin block size debacle, you don't have people who are pulling in different directions because it directly impacts their bottom line if Python does X or Y. There's no one who particularly profits from there being a GIL.
Who is pro-GIL
Nobody is pro-GIL per se. But a lot of people were pro-No-Single-Threaded-Performance-Desegregation. The first GIL-removal patch was submitted all the way back against python 1.4, and regular attempts have been made ever since, but it wasn't possible to remove the GIL without making the single threaded performance of existing python code worse, so Guido and co. refused to accept them.
And the performance hit is still up to 50%, just like in the first attempts. Except this time it comes from Facebook.
Poking around, I've not been able to find anyone else claiming higher than 10%? Is this 50% from your benchmarks, or is there a link I can see?
One of the strengths of Bitcoin is its stability, the fact that it doesn't change on someone's whim like it happened for example with Ethereum which was forked because someone was smarter than their dumb contracts.
Grey beards didn’t take Python seriously, or more like they just didn’t care about. C and Java what matters after all and Python is just a toy for beginners!
Do Grey beards care about AI?
The Lisp grey beards do.
They are AI
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