nedbat

I appreciate you taking the time to explain this. The point of my post was not that I was right and pyon was wrong. I said that his point was something I hadn't encountered before. I'm happy to learn more.

The point of the post was that he did not do what you have done here. Instead of explaining in a way that let people learn, he belittled and insulted.

When I said I hadn't encountered the detail before, I didn't mean amortization was the detail. I meant the order of operations (pyon's complaint) was the detail.

I think you are being very generous to call his comment "obvious humor". A number of the people in that comment stream missed the humor, and pyon gave no indication (such as a tone indicator) that it was humor.

The comments were gone due to a bug, but are back: https://nedbatchelder.com/text/slowsgrows#comments

pyon's comment wasn't about the idea of amortization. He claimed that the order of the operations mattered. The comments are back: https://nedbatchelder.com/text/slowsgrows#comments

The comments were gone due to a bug. They are back now: https://nedbatchelder.com/text/slowsgrows#comments

Fixed! The comments are back on the page.

Hmm, there are no comments on the page, I think that's a bug I introduced when I removed the ".html" suffix from the URLs maybe? I'll look into it.

It does seem small at Anthropic scale. But instead of faulting them for contributing "so little", maybe we can point to the thousands of large companies that are doing nothing.

You really have no idea what you are talking about.

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.

> Also sponserships like "Pallets group ...

Those are "fiscal sponsorships" meaning the PSF holds money for other organizations. The PSF is not funding Pallets (or Boston Python or North Bay Python, etc, etc). They accept money earmarked for those organizations and provide administrative support. Details: https://www.python.org/psf/fiscal-sponsorees/

OK, thanks for making your position clear. You disagree with some of the core mission of the PSF. Luckily you are in the minority and the PSF is carrying on.

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.

I'm not sure what you are labeling as pet projects of leadership? Is there something the PSF is doing that you consider a pet project rather than part of their core mission?

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.

Using multi-level Carlson Truchet tiles for half-toning images: https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/202208/truchet_images.html

I can't tell if you are agreeing with my post or disagreeing...

Python pickles are bytecode programs, but different bytecode than the Python bytecode compiled from .py files. https://docs.python.org/3/library/pickletools.html#pickletoo...

It does not surprise me that people shitpost calling an expert "moronic" without any counter arguments.

Classic: ask what the team does, and before getting an answer, decide that it doesn't make sense.

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.

Yes, but why do I need to know that as a Python programmer? What mistakes might I make if I don't know about it?

Yes, why do you ask?

Even assembly won't expose you to pipelining, cache misses, and branch prediction.

You'd think it was obvious, but people keep saying it. And there are commenters here disagreeing.

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.