[Python-ideas] Retire or reword the "Beautiful is better than ugly" Zen clause

[Samantha Quan]

First, I'd like to express how grateful I am to see more and more technical communities embrace diversity and inclusivity, particularly big tech communities like Python, Redis, and Django.

In the spirit of the big recent terminology change, I propose retiring or rewording the "Beautiful is better than ugly" Zen clause for perpetuating beauty bias and containing lookist slur. I realize that Zen is old, but you can't argue that the word "ugly" is harmless, now that society condemns body shaming, and instead promotes body acceptance and self-love. One alternative to that clause I could think of is "Clean is better than dirty", but please do speak up if you have better ideas.

I ask you to give this change serious consideration, even if it seems over-the-top to you now, because times change, and this will be of great help in the battle for the more tolerant and less judgemental society.

I understand that this topic may seem controversial to some, so please be open-minded and take extra care to respect the PSF Code Of Conduct when replying.

Thank you!

  - Sam

Some references:

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Lookism

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookism

[Jacco van Dorp]

-1. The concept of ugly code is everywhere on the internet. Everyone on this planet has either written ugly code or no code at all. Some have also written beautiful code.

People aren't code, and code isn't people. I can't see this becoming a problem until we have an AI that can feel insulted because someone tells it it's code looks ugly, and that's waaaaay off. Don't conflate code with people, please.

At the risk of politicizing (which you also took), I'd like to add that diversity and inclusivity of thought is more important than that of whatever arbitrary beauty standard. 

The Zen is clear and not about people. Don't try to make it to be so.

Op do 13 sep. 2018 om 10:38 schreef Samantha Quan <sammi...@yandex.com>:

_______________________________________________
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https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas
Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/

[Oleg Broytman]

On Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 09:36:42AM +0100, Samantha Quan <sammi...@yandex.com> wrote:
> First, I'd like to express how grateful I am to see more and more
> technical communities embrace diversity and inclusivity, particularly big
> tech communities like Python, Redis, and Django.
> In the spirit of the big recent terminology change, I propose retiring or
> rewording the "Beautiful is better than ugly" Zen clause for perpetuating
> beauty bias and containing lookist slur. I realize that Zen is old, but
> you can't argue that the word "ugly" is harmless, now that society
> condemns body shaming, and instead promotes body acceptance and self-love.
> One alternative to that clause I could think of is "Clean is better than
> dirty", but please do speak up if you have better ideas.
> I ask you to give this change serious consideration, even if it seems
> over-the-top to you now, because times change, and this will be of great
> help in the battle for the more tolerant and less judgemental society.
> I understand that this topic may seem controversial to some, so please be
> open-minded and take extra care to respect the PSF Code Of Conduct when
> replying.
> Thank you!

> б═ - Sam

> Some references:
> https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Lookism
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookism

Nice trolling, go on! :-D

PS. But please can you configure your mail to send text, not HTML?

Oleg.
--
Oleg Broytman https://phdru.name/ p...@phdru.name
Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.

[Giampaolo Rodola']

> _______________________________________________
> Python-ideas mailing list
> Python...@python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas
> Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/

This is simply ridiculous. I'm not sure if this is political
correctness pushed to its limits or just trolling.

--
Giampaolo - http://grodola.blogspot.com

[Oleg Broytman]

On Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 11:05:53AM +0200, Jacco van Dorp <j.van...@deonet.nl> wrote:
> -1. The concept of ugly code is everywhere on the internet. Everyone on
> this planet has either written ugly code or no code at all. Some have also
> written beautiful code.
>
> People aren't code, and code isn't people. I can't see this becoming a
> problem until we have an AI that can feel insulted because someone tells it
> it's code looks ugly, and that's waaaaay off. Don't conflate code with
> people, please.
>
> At the risk of politicizing (which you also took), I'd like to add that
> diversity and inclusivity of thought is more important than that of
> whatever arbitrary beauty standard.
>
> The Zen is clear and not about people. Don't try to make it to be so.

"Master/slave" technical term is also not about people but some
think the term must be changed:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/11/python_purges_master_and_slave_in_political_pogrom/

I'm against the move and like the PRs to be reverted.

> Op do 13 sep. 2018 om 10:38 schreef Samantha Quan <sammi...@yandex.com>:
>
> > First, I'd like to express how grateful I am to see more and more
> > technical communities embrace diversity and inclusivity, particularly big
> > tech communities like Python, Redis, and Django.
> >
> > In the spirit of the big recent terminology change, I propose retiring or
> > rewording the "Beautiful is better than ugly" Zen clause for perpetuating
> > beauty bias and containing lookist slur. I realize that Zen is old, but you
> > can't argue that the word "ugly" is harmless, now that society condemns
> > body shaming, and instead promotes body acceptance and self-love. One
> > alternative to that clause I could think of is "Clean is better than
> > dirty", but please do speak up if you have better ideas.
> >
> > I ask you to give this change serious consideration, even if it seems
> > over-the-top to you now, because times change, and this will be of great
> > help in the battle for the more tolerant and less judgemental society.
> >
> > I understand that this topic may seem controversial to some, so please be
> > open-minded and take extra care to respect the PSF Code Of Conduct when
> > replying.
> >
> > Thank you!
> >
> > - Sam
> >
> > Some references:
> >
> > https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Lookism
> > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookism

Oleg.
--
Oleg Broytman https://phdru.name/ p...@phdru.name
Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Thu, 13 Sep 2018 11:55:40 +0200
"Giampaolo Rodola'" <g.ro...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> This is simply ridiculous. I'm not sure if this is political
> correctness pushed to its limits or just trolling.

Indeed she might be trolling. Though the fact we're hesitating on the
diagnosis shows how far reality has come on the matter...

Regards

Antoine.

[Stephan Houben]

Op do 13 sep. 2018 12:03 schreef Antoine Pitrou <soli...@pitrou.net>:

On Thu, 13 Sep 2018 11:55:40 +0200
"Giampaolo Rodola'" <g.ro...@gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> This is simply ridiculous. I'm not sure if this is political
> correctness pushed to its limits or just trolling.

Indeed she might be trolling.  Though the fact we're hesitating on the
diagnosis shows how far reality has come on the matter...

Poe's Law?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

Stephan

[Antoine Pitrou]

Hi Samantha,

You ask others to be open-minded, but fail to show such an attitude
yourself. Beauty is a very old and important concept in the history of
human societies, present in most or all of them, and has been the
subject of a wide range of interpretations, studies and theories.

And, as a French person, I have to notice this is yet another attempt
to impose reactionary, intolerant American politics on the rest of the
world (or of the Python community).

Regards,

Antoine.

On Thu, 13 Sep 2018 09:36:42 +0100
Samantha Quan <sammi...@yandex.com>
wrote:

[David Mertz]

Some books we should burn include:

Title	Beautiful Evidence
Author	Edward R. Tufte
Edition	illustrated
Publisher	Graphics Press, 2006
ISBN	1930824165, 9781930824164
Length	213 pages

Title	Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think Theory in practice
Editors	Andy Oram, Greg Wilson
Edition	illustrated
Publisher	O'Reilly Media, 2007
ISBN	0596510047, 9780596510046
Length	593 pages
Subjects	Computers  ›  Programming  ›  General

Title	Beautiful Visualization: Looking at Data Through the Eyes of Experts Theory in practice
Editors	Julia S. Steele, Noah P. N. Iliinsky
Publisher	O'Reilly, 2010
ISBN	1449379885, 9781449379889
Length	397 pages

[Jacco van Dorp]

I'm pleasantly surprised by the general response here. I was taking it seriously because, well, that's how far it's going everywhere.

[Oleg Broytman]

On Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 12:22:14PM +0200, Jacco van Dorp <j.van...@deonet.nl> wrote:
> I'm pleasantly surprised by the general response here. I was taking it
> seriously because, well, that's how far it's going everywhere.

1. I couldn't believe it could be serious.

2. I was sure it was trolling on the trail of
https://bugs.python.org/issue34605

3. The name of a Canadian actress combined with Russian free email
service made the suspicion more obvious.

Oleg.
--
Oleg Broytman https://phdru.name/ p...@phdru.name
Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.

[Jonathan Fine]

The first line from "import this" is

The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters

I suggest we put this discussion on hold, until Tim Peters (copied)
has had a chance to respond.

--
Jonathan

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Thu, 13 Sep 2018 12:32:43 +0200
Oleg Broytman <p...@phdru.name> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 12:22:14PM +0200, Jacco van Dorp <j.van...@deonet.nl> wrote:
> > I'm pleasantly surprised by the general response here. I was taking it
> > seriously because, well, that's how far it's going everywhere.
>
> 1. I couldn't believe it could be serious.
>
> 2. I was sure it was trolling on the trail of
> https://bugs.python.org/issue34605
>
> 3. The name of a Canadian actress combined with Russian free email
> service made the suspicion more obvious.

Good point. I don't know much about actresses and gmane hides the
provider part of e-mail addresses.

Regards

Antoine.

[João Santos]

One important difference between master/slave and beautiful/ugly is that the first pair are concrete concepts that typically applies to people, and the second are abstract concepts that always applied also to objects and abstract concepts.

[Chris Angelico]

On Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 10:16 PM, João Santos <jm...@jsantos.eu> wrote:
> One important difference between master/slave and beautiful/ugly is that the
> first pair are concrete concepts that typically applies to people, and the
> second are abstract concepts that always applied also to objects and
> abstract concepts.

You may or may not be right about "slave", but "master" is frequently
applied to objects - the document from which other copies are taken,
the template from which a cast is formed, etc. Even when applied to
people, it doesn't have to be paired with slavery - a "master" of a
skill is, well, someone who has mastered it. Excising the word master
from all documentation is likely impossible, and pointless.

And yes, I'm probably going to be slaughtered for saying this. But I
grew up around photocopiers, so to me, the "master" was the good
quality print-out that we stuck into the top of the copier, as opposed
to the "copies" that came out the front of it. Not everyone assumes
the worst about words.

ChrisA

[Jacco van Dorp]

Op do 13 sep. 2018 om 14:22 schreef Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com>:

On Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 10:16 PM, João Santos <jm...@jsantos.eu> wrote:
> One important difference between master/slave and beautiful/ugly is that the
> first pair are concrete concepts that typically applies to people, and the
> second are abstract concepts that always applied also to objects and
> abstract concepts.

You may or may not be right about "slave", but "master" is frequently
applied to objects - the document from which other copies are taken,
the template from which a cast is formed, etc. Even when applied to
people, it doesn't have to be paired with slavery - a "master" of a
skill is, well, someone who has mastered it. Excising the word master
from all documentation is likely impossible, and pointless.

And yes, I'm probably going to be slaughtered for saying this. But I
grew up around photocopiers, so to me, the "master" was the good
quality print-out that we stuck into the top of the copier, as opposed
to the "copies" that came out the front of it. Not everyone assumes
the worst about words.

ChrisA

Nah, you're pretty right. Removing master/slave is almost as stupid as ugly/beautiful. You can have master and slave devices - for example, if I have a PC that tells a robot what to do, my PC is the master and the robot the slave. Nothing wrong there either.

It's just what the words mean. People shouldn't try and take personal offense to things that haven't been applied to them personally, or, even worse, complain about a term applied to anything/anyone else in a way they perceive to be offensive. Perception is different between people. 

[M.-A. Lemburg]

I just want to add my -1 to the list of others who have
already expressed similar opinions.

Please keep the meaning of language associated with the
respective context. Language is always open to interpretation.
It doesn't imply that one particular interpretation is
more right or more wrong, nor does it imply that a meaning in one
context can be equally applied to other contexts.

The Zen of Python clearly applies to programming and language
design. Beauty in design is very similar to beauty in flora. For
me, it refers to a general feeling of consistency, pureness and
standing out on its own. It's abstract and doesn't have
anything to do with humans.

--
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

Professional Python Services directly from the Experts
>>> Python Projects, Coaching and Consulting ... http://www.egenix.com/
>>> Python Database Interfaces ... http://products.egenix.com/
>>> Plone/Zope Database Interfaces ... http://zope.egenix.com/
________________________________________________________________________

::: We implement business ideas - efficiently in both time and costs :::

eGenix.com Software, Skills and Services GmbH Pastor-Loeh-Str.48
D-40764 Langenfeld, Germany. CEO Dipl.-Math. Marc-Andre Lemburg
Registered at Amtsgericht Duesseldorf: HRB 46611
http://www.egenix.com/company/contact/
http://www.malemburg.com/

[João Santos]

That's why I focused on pairs. I understand why some people might feel offended by the term slave (and master in opposition to it), despite personally feeling the concepts are detached. I never saw anyone oppose using the terms master/copy.

Trying to tie something as abstract and general as ugly/beautiful to body shaming is a considerably bigger stretch.

[Calvin Spealman]

Samantha,

I came into this thread reading the subject and thinking "over my dead body!" until I read your well-thought reasoning and gave even a little bit of thought to the idea.

You're absolutely right and while I think its very unlikely to get enough support I do think it is a very good suggestion, totally reasonable, and that we should change it.

I ask everyone on this thread being rude to please step back and try to look at the issue without your bias and knee-jerk reactions. Even if you can't change your minds, at least be more civil about it.

[Giampaolo Rodola']

On Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 12:51 PM Oleg Broytman <p...@phdru.name> wrote:
> 2. I was sure it was trolling on the trail of
>    https://bugs.python.org/issue34605

Wow! I find it a bit excessive that #34605 was not discussed first and got checked in so quickly. I hope there won't be similar initiatives about terms such as killing, abortion, daemon, termination, disabled, etc. If somebody gets offended about these terms being used in computer science it's entirely their problem.  Trying to make such individuals happy is useless and a waste of python-dev time.

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Thu, 13 Sep 2018 09:16:17 -0400
Calvin Spealman <cspe...@redhat.com>
wrote:

>
> I came into this thread reading the subject and thinking "over my dead
> body!" until I read your well-thought reasoning and gave even a little bit
> of thought to the idea.
>
> You're absolutely right and while I think its very unlikely to get enough
> support I do think it is a very good suggestion, totally reasonable, and

> that we *should* change it.

>
> I ask everyone on this thread being rude to please step back and try to
> look at the issue without your bias and knee-jerk reactions.

If you want to call other people rude, at least show a bit of courage
and spell their names clearly instead of casting mass ad hominem
attacks.

And of course you are not free of bias yourself, and it seems you have
knee-jerk reactions of your own, so perhaps you could have avoided
posting this entirely. Attack the arguments, not the people.

Regards

Antoine.

[Rhodri James]

On 13/09/18 14:16, Calvin Spealman wrote:
> Samantha,
>
> I came into this thread reading the subject and thinking "over my dead
> body!" until I read your well-thought reasoning and gave even a little bit
> of thought to the idea.
>
> You're absolutely right and while I think its very unlikely to get enough
> support I do think it is a very good suggestion, totally reasonable, and

> that we *should* change it.

>
> I ask everyone on this thread being rude to please step back and try to
> look at the issue without your bias and knee-jerk reactions. Even if you
> can't change your minds, at least be more civil about it.

I couldn't disagree more, and I say that as a card-carrying liberal.

First, did you check out Oleg's post about the likelihood that this is a
troll?

More importantly, this whole idea of banning and/or changing terminology
is psychologically and sociologically wrong-headed. The moment you say
"You may not use that word" you create a taboo, and give the word a
power that it did not have before. It actually becomes more destructive
when it is (inevitably) wheeled out, not less. You may claim that it
stops everyday usage of the word, and to an extent that's true, but if
people want to use the concept as an insult they will just load that
intent onto some other previously innocent word.

I got to watch this happen when I was growing up. My father was a
Disablement Resettlement Officer, which means he found jobs for people
with a wide variety of disabilities. I watched as the words that could
be used for disabled people changed as the current word was deemed
insulting, and even as a youngster I was boggled that no one seemed to
notice or care that exactly the same thing happened every time. For a
brief moment the new terminology would be all novel and different (and
sometimes laughable), but after a short while all the connotations of
the previous term would catch up with the new term and bring some new
friends they had made on the way (see "laughable" above).

So no, I'm not changing my mind. The suggestion to change is the
knee-jerk reaction, and we shouldn't fall for it.

--
Rhodri James *-* Kynesim Ltd

[Tim Peters]

[Jonathan Fine <jfin...@gmail.com>]

The first line from "import this" is

        The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters

I suggest we put this discussion on hold, until Tim Peters (copied)
has had a chance to respond.

Don't look at me - I was merely channeling Guido ;-)

That said, "beautiful v. ugly" in this context has nothing to do with human appearance.  It's in the same general sense as in other technical fields:  there's beautiful & ugly physics, beautiful & ugly mathematics, beautiful & ugly computer code.

And not all people agree on which is which, and that's fine.  Whatever _your_ aesthetic standards, you almost certainly prefer what you perceive to be beautiful than what you perceive to be ugly.  It's as neutral, to me, as "good is better than evil".

So I oppose changing it.

If I were to change anything, I'd drop the reference to "Zen".  That wasn't part of the original, and was added by someone else.  If, e.g., a Zen Buddhist objected that this use trivializes their beliefs, I'd have real sympathy with _that_.  But I'd be greatly surprised if a Zen Buddhist exists who objected to wordplay ;-)

[Mark E. Haase]

On Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 10:49 AM Rhodri James <rho...@kynesim.co.uk> wrote:

More importantly, this whole idea of banning and/or changing terminology is psychologically and sociologically wrong-headed.  The moment you say "You may not use that word" you create a taboo, and give the word a power that it did not have before.

Samantha posted this as a *proposal* to python-*ideas*, the mailing list where we purportedly discuss... umm... ideas. Samantha has not banned any words from Python, so let's tone down the hyperbole.

These responses that assume Samantha is a troll are based on... what? Other posters on this list use Yandex e-mails, and nobody called those people trolls. And there are a lot of disagreements about ideas, and most of those people don't get called trolls, either. The Python CoC calls for *respect*, and I posit that the majority reaction to Samantha's first post has been disrespectful.

Engage the post on the ideas—or ignore it altogether—but please don't automatically label newcomers with controversial ideas as trolls. Let's assume her proposal was made in good faith.

[Paul Moore]

On Thu, 13 Sep 2018 at 17:15, Mark E. Haase <meh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Let's assume her proposal was made in good faith.

Certainly. I'm opposed to any proposal to change long-established and
common usage wording on the basis that it has the *potential* to cause
offense. If anyone is *actually* offended by the wording, let them
speak up, and explain why they find it offensive. Otherwise, I'd
prefer to assume that people are sensible, and have a certain level of
willingness to take others' words in good faith, rather than assuming
offense where none is intended.

It would be easy for me to claim that the culture of assuming offense
where none was intended is itself a divisive and corrosive factor in
society at the moment. But if I did so, that in itself would be making
unfair assumptions of the intention of people making proposals like
Samantha's, so I won't - I'll merely say that I'd like any proposal
such as this to be backed by specific evidence of real-world cases
that demonstrate that the change is needed, exactly the same criteria
as we would use for a proposal for a technical change[1].

For what it's worth, I'd also have preferred it if the recent change
to eliminate the (pretty standard) master/slave terminology from the
documentation had been subject to the same requirement for evidence of
need.

Words have multiple meanings. Assuming that a word used in one context
automatically brings along context and connotations from a totally
unrelated area seems silly to me, to be honest. Language isn't that
black and white[2].

Paul

[1] I appreciate that questions of what makes good, or even
acceptable, prose are very subjective. So concrete evidence is harder
to produce. But nevertheless, at least an honest attempt to produce
*something* would be better than simple unsubstantiated statements
like "you can't argue that the word "ugly" is harmless" (yes I can -
and I will, if you insist), or references like "In the spirit of the
big recent terminology change" to other controversial changes as if
they offered unqualified justification for more of the same.

[2] There's an example - in case anyone thought otherwise, the phrase
"black and white" referred to contrast between opposites, and not
racial stereotyping, or indeed any reference to people as opposed to
abstract concepts...

[Jonathan Fine]

The line in question is from Tim Peters' "The Zen of Python"

Beautiful is better than <something>.

where at present <something> is "ugly". My opinion, based on my
present experience and knowledge, is that it is reasonable to consider
asking Tim to change <something>.

Also, I suggest that in the context of Python and its Zen

Beautiful is better than cryptic.

may work better. I don't wish to change

Beautiful is better than

but I think in the Python context "beautiful" might have a better
opposing idea. Hence my suggestion of "cryptic".

By the way,

https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/beautiful

gives 20 'equal first' antonyms for beautiful, starting with awkward
and ending with unrefined. You might also want to look at

https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/cryptic
https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/ugly


At present I'm neither for or against making any change. I am in
favour of having a respectful discussion, where we learn from each
other.

--
Jonathan

[Anders Hovmöller]

> If I were to change anything, I'd drop the reference to "Zen". That wasn't part of the original, and was added by someone else. If, e.g., a Zen Buddhist objected that this use trivializes their beliefs, I'd have real sympathy with _that_. But I'd be greatly surprised if a Zen Buddhist exists who objected to wordplay ;-)

I just happen to be a Zen Buddhist! And you’re right. The worst reaction you are likely to get is an eye roll.

/ Kankyo (aka Anders)

[Ryan Gonzalez]

FWIW a big flag to me was putting an Urban Dictionary link under "references"...

--

Ryan (ライアン)
Yoko Shimomura, ryo (supercell/EGOIST), Hiroyuki Sawano >> everyone else
https://refi64.com/

[Jonathan Fine]

Possibly off topic - but it is about beauty.

Anders wrote

> I just happen to be a Zen Buddhist! And you’re right. The worst reaction you are likely to get is an eye roll.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thich_Naht_Hahn is a Zen Buddhist. He has said

To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don't need
to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.

I wonder if this is related to the beauty in "The Zen of Python".

--
Jonathan

[Mikhail V]

On Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 11:39 AM Samantha Quan <sammi...@yandex.com> wrote:

>
> One alternative to that clause I could think of is "Clean is better than dirty",
> but please do speak up if you have better ideas.

"Clean is better than hairy!" :-D

> I ask you to give this change serious consideration,

On a serious note:

1. Even if this slogan will be changed - it's an old folklore and it's
written in many places,
so at best it can be changed only in few places. Therefore your wish
will not be satisfied anyway.
And why care? I've started using Python long before I even knew there
is such a thing
called "Zen of Python".

2. Trying to take the word "ugly" out of the context and pretend it's
offensive or
sexism or something - are you serious about that? If so - then sorry,
it borders with absurd.
I could understand possible bad associations with the word "slave",
but "ugly" is an general
purpose word like e.g. big, small, tall, heavy, etc.

3. As for the wording - TBH, I think "Beautiful is better than ugly"
sounds slightly crude,
not because of possible associations, but for a topmost slogan - I
find it not the most elegant
wording to be honest. And I don't know what can be really 'beautiful'
in _any_ code.
Ugly - yes, it's often can be said about the code which is full of
redundant punctuation, bad formatting, etc.
But this sound strange: "this code is beautiful". Do people really
say like that?

I think "clean" is a better adjective for the code. I'd say:
"Clean is better than untidy"
more elegant wording, but anyway, it would not really change anything.

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 3:57 AM, Mikhail V <mikha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> And I don't know what can be really 'beautiful'
> in _any_ code.
> Ugly - yes, it's often can be said about the code which is full of
> redundant punctuation, bad formatting, etc.
> But this sound strange: "this code is beautiful". Do people really
> say like that?
>

Yes. Yes, I do. Not often, because code is seldom beautiful enough to
warrant comment, but it definitely does happen.

ChrisA

[Nathaniel Smith]

It's not just automatically labeling newcomers with controversial
ideas – This is a very common tactic that online organized bigotry
groups use: invent fake "socially progressive" personas, and use them
to stir up arguments, undermine trust, split communities, etc. The
larger campaigns are pretty well documented:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/06/16/_endfathersday_is_a_hoax_fox_news_claims_feminists_want_to_get_rid_of_father.html
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/your-slip-is-showing-4chan-trolls-operation-lollipop
https://birdeemag.com/free-bleeding-thing/
https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/femcon-4chan-convention-scam/
http://www.newnownext.com/clovergender-hoax-fake-prank-pharma-bro-martin-shkreli-4chan-troll/01/2017/

Smaller-scale versions are also common – these people love to jump
into difficult conversations and try to make them more difficult.

That said, in OP's case we don't actually know either way, and even
trolls can inadvertently suggest good ideas, so we should consider the
proposal on its merits.

Applied to people, lookism is a real and honestly kind of horrifying
thing: humans who happen to be born with less symmetric faces get paid
worse, receive worse health care, all kinds of unfair things. It
wasn't too long ago that being sufficiently ugly in public was
actually illegal in many places:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugly_law

But even if we all agree that beautiful and ugly people should be
treated equally, I don't see how it follows that beautiful and ugly
buildings should be treated equally, or beautiful and ugly music
should be treated equally, or beautiful and ugly code should be
treated equally. The situations are totally different. Maybe there's
some connection I'm missing, and if anyone (Samantha?) has links to
deeper discussion then I'll happily take a look. But until then I'm
totally comfortable with keeping the Zen as-is. (And I'm someone
pretty far on the "SJW" side of the spectrum, and 100% in favor of
Victor's original PR.)

-n

--
Nathaniel J. Smith -- https://vorpus.org

[Koos Zevenhoven]

On Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 8:33 PM Jonathan Fine <jfin...@gmail.com> wrote:

    To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don't need
    to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.

I wonder if this is related to the beauty in "The Zen of Python".

Different people may need different advice. 

Python and open source have always been more about thingslike inclusivity and diversity than about excessive political correctness. I'm sure the historical concepts of master/slave were so distant to the handsome young men that developed the computer science concepts that they didn't expect to cause any naming conflicts. 

To avoid forming any unnecessary taboos and making things more fragile than they actually are, I'd like to point out that a computer was is the perfect slave, and that code that causes harm to others is the perfect <insert word "ugly" here>.

Don't judge the use of a single word. Look at the words next to it – and the wider context. If you still think the wording itself is harmful, consider doing something about it. And if you think the background of some people makes it difficult for them to understand the context of a word, consider helping them out.

If you can't tell inclusivity/diversity from political correctness, or dirty words from dirty bytes or from unfriendliness and intolerance, you'd better go fuck yourself. There's nothing interesting here, anyway ;-). Or at least it my be a good idea to be somewhat careful. 

Tim or others would probably have a better and more relevant response, though. Sorry, if you have to settle for mine.

—Koos

[Samantha Quan]

Of course, the argument wasn't that we should treat "good" and "bad" code equally (speaking of common tactics -- "straw man"). The point was that the words you use can make a huge difference.

 

"Ugly" is very obviously a slur. It carries a dark meaning *and* it's still being actively used towards people. Honestly, I can't imagine someone cheering up when they see that word, especially if they're self-conscious about their appearance or were told they were "ugly" at some point of their life.

 

It's my understanding that master/slave terminology is now deprecated, because these words carry dark meanings, too, and further alienate folks who feel uncomfortable being reminded of them everywhere. That's the idea of inclusivity: to make other people (usually from marginalized groups) feel welcome and safe. By removing/replacing the word "ugly", we could make one additional step towards being more inclusive.

 

13.09.2018, 19:36, "Nathaniel Smith" <n...@pobox.com>:

[Richard Mateosian]

Body shaming is bad. Don't call people "ugly," regardless of how they look.

Code shaming, on the other hand, can be productive. Nothing wrong
with calling ugly code ugly. ...RM


On Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 1:38 AM Samantha Quan <sammi...@yandex.com> wrote:

You can't argue that the word "ugly" is harmless, now that society

condemns body shaming, and instead promotes body acceptance and
self-love.

--

Richard Mateosian <x...@pacbell.net>
Berkeley, California

[Oleg Broytman]

On Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 09:06:53PM +0100, Samantha Quan <sammi...@yandex.com> wrote:
> It's my understanding that master/slave terminology is now deprecated,
> because these words carry dark meanings, too, and further alienate folks
> who feel uncomfortable being reminded of them everywhere. That's the idea
> of inclusivity: to make other people (usually from marginalized groups)
> feel welcome and safe. By removing/replacing the word "ugly", we could
> make one additional step towards being more inclusive.

I also propose to ban the following technical terms that carry dark
meanings: "abort", "kill" and "execute" (stop the genocide!)
Not sure about "terminate".

There are also nationalist jokes about Dutchs. That also must be
stopped!

Let's decide how to replace them and who'll send pull requests about
what.

Oleg.
--
Oleg Broytman https://phdru.name/ p...@phdru.name
Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.

[Greg Ewing]

Jacco van Dorp wrote:
> You can have master and slave devices - for example, if
> I have a PC that tells a robot what to do, my PC is the master and the
> robot the slave.

If we're going to object to "slave", we should object to "robot"
as well, since it's derived from a Czech word meaning "forced
worker".

https://www.etymonline.com/word/robot

--
Greg

[Greg Ewing]

M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> For
> me, it refers to a general feeling of consistency, pureness and
> standing out on its own. It's abstract and doesn't have
> anything to do with humans.

Yep. And the proposed replacement "clean/dirty" doesn't even
mean the same thing. It's entirely possible for a thing to
be spotlessly clean without being beautiful or elegant.

--
Greg

[Tim Delaney]

On Fri, 14 Sep 2018 at 08:48, Greg Ewing <greg....@canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:

M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> For
> me, it refers to a general feeling of consistency, pureness and
> standing out on its own. It's abstract and doesn't have
> anything to do with humans.

Yep. And the proposed replacement "clean/dirty" doesn't even
mean the same thing. It's entirely possible for a thing to
be spotlessly clean without being beautiful or elegant.

"Elegant" is the *only* word I think it would be appropriate to replace "beautiful" with.

And I can't think of an elegant replacement for "ugly" to pair with "elegant". "Awkward" would probably be the best I can think of, and "Elegant is better than awkward" just feels kinda awkward ...

Tim Delaney

[Guido van Rossum]

Everyone who still wants to reply to this thread: please decide for yourself whether the OP, "Samantha Quan" who started it could be a Russian troll. Facts to consider: (a) the OP's address is ...@yandex.com, a well-known Russian website (similar to Google); (b) there's a Canadian actress named Samantha Quan.

--

--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)

[Greg Ewing]

Calvin Spealman wrote:
> I ask everyone on this thread being rude to please step back and try to
> look at the issue without your bias and knee-jerk reactions.

I've given it some thought, and this is what I think:

As has been pointed out, context is important. The reason that
shunning people for not having beautiful bodies is distasteful
is that people don't have much choice about their physical
appearance.

But we *do* have a choice about which non-human things we
surround ourselves with, especially those things that we
make ourselves. Calling for the words "beautiful" and "ugly"
to be expunged from the language is saying that we shouldn't
be allowed to choose *anything* based on how it affects us
aesthetically. That, I think, would make the world a rather
miserable place to live in.

--
Greg

[Tim Peters]

[Tim Delaney <timothy....@gmail.com>]

"Elegant" is the *only* word I think it would be appropriate to replace "beautiful" with.

And I can't think of an elegant replacement for "ugly" to pair with "elegant". "Awkward" would probably be the best I can think of, and "Elegant is better than awkward" just feels kinda awkward ...

I already made clear that I'm opposed to changing it.  But, if fashion dictates it must change, then the only worthy alternative would be:

    Elegant is better than inelegant.

 Which illustrates all by itself why inelegant sucks ;-)

[Anders Hovmöller]

> "Ugly" is very obviously a slur. It carries a dark meaning *and* it's still being actively used towards people. Honestly, I can't imagine someone cheering up when they see that word, especially if they're self-conscious about their appearance or were told they were "ugly" at some point of their life.

Many things are slurs for this reason. This thread has suggested “hairy” which will have the exact same problem. “Smell” as in “code smell” has bad connotations for every man who has ever been a teenager and I’m guessing for many women too. At least we use “ugly” for cars or trees, but “hairy” and “smelly” not so much.

I’d like to see some better suggestions for replacements here. The Zen is trying to express what the Python community feels about how code looks and feels, and just removing this point would make the Zen less reflective of the actual values we share.

/ Anders

[Terry Reedy]

On 9/13/2018 7:34 PM, Tim Peters wrote:

> I already made clear that I'm opposed to changing it.\

To me, this settles the issues. As author, you own the copyright on
your work. The CLA allows revision of contributions, but I don't think
that contributed poetry should be treated the same as code and docs.

The free verse form reminds me more of Hindu-Jain-Buddhist sutras, with
a bit of Monty Python tossed in, rather than of Zen writing. I presume
that 'Zen' refers more to the method of composition, and the lack of
post-production editing, than to the content.

If the text were up for grabs, I would want to change some periods to
semi-colons and reconsider some of the other lines.

The 'beauty' line is one of multiple contrasts, and should be judged in
that context, not in isolation.

--
Terry Jan Reedy

[Tim Peters]

[Tim]

> I already made clear that I'm opposed to changing it.

[Terry Reedy <tjr...@udel.edu>]

To me, this settles the issues.  As author, you own the copyright on
your work.  The CLA allows revision of contributions, but I don't think
that contributed poetry should be treated the same as code and docs.

I don't care about legalities here.  If people want to change it into something it never intended to say, so it goes.  It wouldn't be the first time A Prophet's words were bastardized to suit political fashion ;-)
 

The free verse form reminds me more of Hindu-Jain-Buddhist sutras, with
a bit of Monty Python tossed in, rather than of Zen writing.  I presume
that 'Zen' refers more to the method of composition, and the lack of
post-production editing, than to the content.

As I noted before, "Zen" wasn't my word.  Somebody else dreamed up that to give it "a title".  In real life, it was originally buried in a comp.lang.python post talking about what guided Guido's _language_ design decisions.

I presume "Zen" came to their mind because it's brief, and a critical reading reveals a number of seeming ambiguities and contradictions, yet it nevertheless _appears_ to say _something_ ;-)  It has those aspects in common with any number of (English translations of) Zen koans.
 

If the text were up for grabs, I would want to change some periods to
semi-colons and reconsider some of the other lines.

While I would not ;-)
 

The 'beauty' line is one of multiple contrasts, and should be judged in
that context, not in isolation.

FYI, that line came first because I channeled that what it said was truly fundamental to Python's design:  Guido's ineffable sense of aesthetics.  Language design isn't a purely deductive science, and Guido never pretended it was.  Back then, various proposals elicited encouragement or visceral disgust very quickly.  Beautiful or ugly?

Indeed, the rest of the aphorisms can be viewed as elaborating on aspects of what "beautiful" and "ugly" _mean_ in this context.

That "beautiful" and "ugly" are subjective is essential to the point it intended.  Any objectively definable terms instead would miss that point entirely.  At heart, Python's design emerged from Guido's sense of beauty (and of its opposite in ordinary language:  ugliness).

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 1:41 PM, Tim Peters <tim.p...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I presume "Zen" came to their mind because it's brief, and a critical
> reading reveals a number of seeming ambiguities and contradictions, yet it
> nevertheless _appears_ to say _something_ ;-)

"Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas - only I don't exactly
know what they are! However, SOMEBODY killed SOMETHING: that's clear,
at any rate..."
-- Alice Liddell, regarding "Jabberwocky"

ChrisA

[Ryan Birmingham]

Discussions like this are always difficult and charged, but I think there's a good opportunity for growth here.

I love being involved with the Python community for, among many other reasons, I think Python is quite inclusive, especially as a technical community.

However, I know that people often feel excluded from technical communities, and I don't think that Python is an exception to that.

Referring to code as ugly doesn't bother me, but I could see how it could bother others. I do also see how it's useful shorthand. I think that there's some sort of balancing test that corresponds to making the decision on not just this case, but others like it.

I know that this kind of decision is made all the time, however, I don't see a PEP which seems to touch on anything like this. I think we need to document it for the sake of transparency and consistency.

Forgetting for a moment the charged context of the conversation itself, does anyone have any opinions on how this would come to be?

Thank you for reading and hopefully listening,

-Ryan Birmingham

[Jacco van Dorp]

My mom is the only one who ever called me any shade of beautiful. I think we all know what that means.

However, if merely the word ugly being on a page can be "harmful", what you really need is professional help, not a change to Python. Because there's obviously been some things in your past you need to work through.

> Python and open source have always been more about things like inclusivity and diversity than about excessive political correctness. I'm sure the historical concepts of master/slave were so distant to the handsome young men that developed the computer > science concepts that they didn't expect to cause any naming conflicts.   

And not the kind of inclusivity you hear about in [current year]. Open source and related cultures never cared about diversity, they always didn't care about who you were or how you looked, and solely judged you by your work or contributions. I don't use python because Guido or whoever is such a great guy and really worked hard, I use Python because Python is a very useful tool for me. 

Inclusivity for inclusivity's sake is a bad thing and kills communities and companies. 

Any charged context is not our problem - it's societies' problem. I'll admit it's a bigger problem, but it's one we need to address through elections, demonstrations, or other political means. Not by self-censorship.

Even aside, Python is a world-wide language. Not american or even european. If we have to ban "Ugly" for american sensitivities, then perhaps we need to ban a number of others for china's sensitivities. Where will it end ? Nowhere, it'll keep going on forever. That's why i'm +1 for reverting the master/slave removal PR's. 

> There are also nationalist jokes about Dutchs. That also must be stopped!

Well, we just are superior ;P

(If I wanted to whine, though...."Dutch" isn't what we call ourselves. Etymological, it's root is the same as our word "Duits" or the German word "Deutz" (or something close), which means...German (Duitsland / Germany). Since we had a war a bit ago where we were occupied, this makes Dutch sound a lot like we'd still be under foreign rule by the nazi's. Terrible, huh ? We call ourself "Nederlanders", which can't really be translated, as the country name, translated as "The Netherlands", is already a multiple, so the normal transformation like america -> american doesn't work very well. Strangly, the Germans don't do this - they call us "Niederlanders", while referring to themselves as "Deutschland".)

[Zaur Shibzukhov]

пятница, 14 сентября 2018 г., 1:56:58 UTC+3 пользователь Guido van Rossum написал:

Everyone who still wants to reply to this thread: please decide for yourself whether the OP, "Samantha Quan" who started it could be a Russian troll. Facts to consider: (a) the OP's address is ...@yandex.com, a well-known Russian website (similar to Google); (b) there's a Canadian actress named Samantha Quan.

I completely agree with the fact that this discussion should be stopped without starting it. I just want to note that anyone (with this it does not have to be Russian at all) can create an account on Yandex. I would not want this trolling to be considered in the spirit of forging a negative attitude towards the Russians.

[Greg Ewing]

Tim Delaney wrote:
> And I can't think of an elegant replacement for "ugly" to pair with
> "elegant".

There's "inelegant", but it doesn't have the same punch as
"ugly". And I think Tim deliberately chose a very punchy word
for that line, to reflect that we care a *lot* about aesthetics
in Python.

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Fri, 14 Sep 2018 10:47:07 +1200
Greg Ewing <greg....@canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:

> M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> > For
> > me, it refers to a general feeling of consistency, pureness and
> > standing out on its own. It's abstract and doesn't have
> > anything to do with humans.
>
> Yep. And the proposed replacement "clean/dirty" doesn't even
> mean the same thing. It's entirely possible for a thing to
> be spotlessly clean without being beautiful or elegant.

Well, not to mention that if you care about discrimination of people
(assuming one doesn't understand what polysemy is :-)), then I'm not
sure that clean/dirty is much better than beautiful/ugly (see e.g.
Norbert Elias "The Civilizing Process" about how cleanliness norms
historically developed - at least in the Western world - in the upper
classes of pacified European kingdoms), while elegant/inelegant may
even be worse.

Regards

Antoine.

[Oleg Broytman]

On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 12:47:39AM -0700, Zaur Shibzukhov <szp...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I completely agree with the fact that this discussion should be stopped

The discussion should be stopped before those 3 pull requests. Now
they should be reverted. Or more discussion will be sparked and more PRs
created.

Oleg.
--
Oleg Broytman https://phdru.name/ p...@phdru.name
Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.

[Greg Ewing]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> Facts to consider: (a) the OP's address is ...@yandex.com

> <http://yandex.com>, a well-known Russian website (similar to Google);

> (b) there's a Canadian actress named Samantha Quan.

Now I'm waiting for the Kremlin to deny rumours that the
Canadian actress Samantha Quan is a russian spy...

[Brett Cannon]

On Thu, 13 Sep 2018 at 13:10 Koos Zevenhoven <k7h...@gmail.com> wrote:

If you can't tell inclusivity/diversity from political correctness, or dirty words from dirty bytes or from unfriendliness and intolerance, you'd better go fuck yourself.

That language and tone is entirely uncalled for and you have been participating here long enough to know that it isn't.

Due to the severity of the language and the fact that I have received previous reports of negative interactions I am implementing a 2 month ban for you, Koos. After two months you can submit a request to have your posting abilities restored.

[Keats Kelleher]

I don't think additional replies on this thread are really constructive. If you aren't contributing any new thoughts on the original message consider not replying at all.

_______________________________________________
Python-ideas mailing list
Python...@python.org
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas
Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/

--

Andrew K Kelleher

Brooklyn, NY

[Davide Rizzo]

Regardless of whether the original posting is a trolling attempt or
not, the argument does have value that I want to corroborate with an
anecdote.

At one Python conference in Italy, participants were given an
elegantly designed and well-crafted t-shirt with a writing in large
characters that read "Beautiful is better than ugly" in reference to
the Zen of Python. Back home, a close person who is not a Python
programmer nor familiar with PEP 20 saw the t-shirt. They were
horrified by the out-of-context sentence for reasons similar to what
has been already stated in support of this argument. It prompted them
of lookism and judgmentality, and found the message to be disturbing
in its suggestion to compare by some standard of beauty and to
discriminate. Let me add some context: this person is socially and
politically active (maybe what someone would call a "SJW"; definitely
not what anyone would call "politically correct"), and is specially
sensitive to issues of discrimination and sexism. This was enough,
though, for me to wonder what kind of message I would be projecting by
wearing that writing on me. I've been since then discouraged to ever
wear the t-shirt in any public context.

This story might have limited value because it's one anecdote, and
because the central point is the impact of the clause when taken out
of its original context. I don't want to construct this as an argument
in favor of removal of the clause, but I want to mention this as
evidence that it does carry emotionally (negatively) charged content.
If this content can be avoided without compromising the purpose and
function of the message, than by all means I would welcome and support
the change. It's meaningful, as a community, to show willingness to
respond to discomfort of any kind.

In this case, I even see the potential to convey the original message
in a more powerful way than the current formulation does. I'm not a
good candidate for this, as the chosen language for this community is
English, which is not my native language nor a language I feel very
good at. I appreciate the poetic style of the original, and I think
that Tim Peters has done an outstanding job at capturing these ideas
into easy and humor-rich language. The opportunity would be to express
the idea of aesthetic appeal of code in some way beyond the simplistic
judgmental labelling of "beautiful" vs "ugly". To be fair, in my
experience this has been a source of confusion to many Python
newcomers, as the notion of "beauty", as with any other value
judgment, is highly relative to the subject evaluating it. I've seen
people think of the Python community as conceited because they would
think they possess some absolute metric of beauty.

One way out of the impasse is to draw upon the feeling behind the
adjective. We call "beautiful" something that appeals to us, makes us
comfortable, or inspires us awe. Ugly is something that makes us
uncomfortable, repels us, disconcerts us. "Let awe and disconcert
drive you"? "Attraction and repulsion are important"? "If it disturbs
you, it's probably wrong"? I know these are terrible and will all fail
the spirit and the style of the original, but I'm dropping suggestions
with the hope to stimulate some constructive thought on the matter.
I'm fine with PEP 20 being unchanged; and my goal is not to find a
replacement or urge for a change, but rather to be willing to think
about it.

Cheers,
Davide

[Chris Angelico]

On Sat, Sep 15, 2018 at 6:09 AM, Davide Rizzo <sor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> One way out of the impasse is to draw upon the feeling behind the
> adjective. We call "beautiful" something that appeals to us, makes us
> comfortable, or inspires us awe. Ugly is something that makes us
> uncomfortable, repels us, disconcerts us. "Let awe and disconcert
> drive you"? "Attraction and repulsion are important"?

Oooh. This is a good one! Let's start using more electromagnets in our
source code.

ChrisA

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Fri, 14 Sep 2018 22:09:06 +0200
Davide Rizzo <sor...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> In this case, I even see the potential to convey the original message
> in a more powerful way than the current formulation does. I'm not a
> good candidate for this, as the chosen language for this community is
> English, which is not my native language nor a language I feel very
> good at. I appreciate the poetic style of the original, and I think
> that Tim Peters has done an outstanding job at capturing these ideas
> into easy and humor-rich language. The opportunity would be to express
> the idea of aesthetic appeal of code in some way beyond the simplistic
> judgmental labelling of "beautiful" vs "ugly". To be fair, in my
> experience this has been a source of confusion to many Python
> newcomers, as the notion of "beauty", as with any other value
> judgment, is highly relative to the subject evaluating it. I've seen
> people think of the Python community as conceited because they would
> think they possess some absolute metric of beauty.

What this merely shows, IMHO, is that writing programming slogans or
jokes on clothing you wear in public is stupid. Most people who see
them won't understand a word of them, and in some cases may badly
misinterpret them as your example shows.

I used to think I was the only one for whom conference t-shirts could
only serve as pyjamas, but then I read online that others feel the
same... That was quite reassuring: there are other sane people out
there! ;-)

Regards

Antoine.

[Chris Barker via Python-ideas]

On Sat, Sep 15, 2018 at 7:38 PM, Antoine Pitrou <soli...@pitrou.net> wrote:

To be fair, in my
> experience this has been a source of confusion to many Python
> newcomers, as the notion of "beauty", as with any other value
> judgment, is highly relative to the subject evaluating it.

Indeed is *is* subjective -- as is "Pythonic", or "elegant", or other concept of that nature -- that is intentional.

"efficient is better than inefficient" kind of goes without saying...

What this merely shows, IMHO, is that writing programming slogans or
jokes on clothing you wear in public is stupid. Most people who see
them won't understand a word of them, and in some cases may badly
misinterpret them as your example shows.

I used to think I was the only one for whom conference t-shirts could
only serve as pyjamas,

well, I see them as my "geek cred" t-shirts, and part of the point is that only those those "in the know" will get it.

So I don't think this says anything about wearing clothing that refers to a particular group is bad, but that one shoudl be caefule about whicj slogans you display out of context. If teh shirt said"

"beuatiful code is better than ugly code"

I don't think there would be an issue.

As to the OP's point:

We now have anecdotal evidence that "beautiful is better than ugly" can be offensive out of context. Other than that, we have people "suspecting" or "imagining" that some people "may" find it offensive in context.

I try never to speak for others when saying whether something is troublesome to a community, but if we have exactly zero actual cases of someone finding it personally offensive (in context), I think we'd be going a bit overboard in making any changes.

Is it any better to make a change that has not been asked for by imagining other's sensitivities than it is to ignore others' sensitivities?

-CHB

--

Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
Oceanographer

Emergency Response Division
NOAA/NOS/OR&R            (206) 526-6959   voice
7600 Sand Point Way NE   (206) 526-6329   fax
Seattle, WA  98115       (206) 526-6317   main reception

Chris....@noaa.gov

[Greg Ewing]

Chris Barker via Python-ideas wrote:
> "efficient is better than inefficient" kind of goes without saying...

Perhaps we should just replace the entire Zen with
"Good is better than bad." Insert your own subjective
ideas on what constitutes "good" and "bad" and you're
set to go. :-)

--
Greg

[Franklin? Lee]

I am very disappointed with the responses to this thread. We have
mockery, dismissiveness, and even insinuations about OP's
psychological health. Whether or not OP is a troll, and whether or not
OP's idea has merit, that kind of response is unnecessary and
unhelpful.

(While I lean toward OP being a troll, the fact that the OP's name is
the same as a Canadian actress is insignificant. Chinese surnames are
single-syllable, there are only so many one-syllable surnames, and
"Samantha" is a common-enough name.)

Since Antoine challenged Calvin to name names, I will name names. If
the thread devolves into one-on-one fights, then you'll know why
Calvin didn't do it.

Antoine:
- Accusing the OP of not being open-minded for proposing (not
"insisting on"!) the idea at all.
"You ask others to be open-minded, but fail to show such an
attitude yourself."
- Labeling the OP's position as reactionary, and intolerant.
"And, as a French person, I have to notice this is yet another
attempt to impose reactionary, intolerant American politics on the
rest of the world (or of the Python community)."

David Mertz: Sarcastically suggesting that we burn programming books
if they use "beautiful" in their titles.

Chris Angelico: This implied accusation:
"Not everyone assumes the worst about words."

Oleg:
- Dismissing the whole post as a troll.*
"Nice trolling, go on! :-D"
- Calling the OP's idea stupid, and calling a different (settled)
decision stupid. (One can argue Oleg isn't really calling anything
stupid, but I preemptively say that's a stupid argument.)
"Removing master/slave is almost as stupid as ugly/beautiful."
- Dismissing the stance as oversensitive offense-taking.
"People shouldn't try and take personal offense to things that
haven't been applied to them personally, or, even worse, complain
about a term applied to anything/anyone else in a way they perceive to
be offensive."
- Mockery: The entire email with this line is spent on mockery:
'I also propose to ban the following technical terms that carry
dark meanings: "abort", "kill" and "execute" (stop the genocide!) ...'

Greg: Another email spent entirely on mockery:

"""If we're going to object to "slave", we should object to
"robot" as well, since it's derived from a Czech word meaning "forced
worker"."""

* There is a difference between discussing whether it is a troll post
and flippantly stating it as fact. The first brings up a relevant
concern. The second says, "No one can reasonably believe what you
claim to believe, so I won't treat you as a rational person."

Jacco:
- This is completely disrespectful and way over the line. Don't try to
make a psychological evaluation from two emails, especially when it's
just someone having an idea you don't like.

"""However, if merely the word ugly being on a page can be
"harmful", what you really need is professional help, not a change to
Python. Because there's obviously been some things in your past you
need to work through."""

- Mockery.

"""If we have to ban "Ugly" for american sensitivities, then
perhaps we need to ban a number of others for china's sensitivities.
Where will it end ?"""

There are people making serious arguments against the idea, including
the people above. But those arguments could have been made without the
above examples. The above quotes don't treat the OP or the OP's ideas
as worthy of a serious and mature response.


P.S.: I read Poe's Law not as a warning against falling for trolls,
but as a warning about confirmation bias. If I keep falling for poes
of group G, it's probably because I'm too far too willing to believe
negative things about G, and don't care to understand them.

[Antoine Pitrou]

Yeah, right.

You know, when I was pointing out Calvin not being very brave by
attacking a bunch of people without giving names, my aim was to merely
point out how dishonest and disrespectful his attitude his. *Not* to
encourage someone to turn his post into more of a clusterfuck of
personal attacks.

Regards

Antoine.


On Sat, 15 Sep 2018 23:39:22 -0400
"Franklin? Lee"

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Chris Barker via Python-ideas writes:

> We now have anecdotal evidence that "beautiful is better than ugly"
> can be offensive out of context. Other than that, we have people
> "suspecting" or "imagining" that some people "may" find it
> offensive in context.

"Sam" at yandex.ru did not even do that. She just took it out of
context. The post was a troll, whether she is or not.

So put it back in context. PyCon 2017 had the whole python -m this on
the back of the shirts. If somebody *ever* complains about that, I'll
bite my tongue and ignore them.

> Is it any better to make a change that has not been asked for by
> imagining other's sensitivities than it is to ignore others'
> sensitivities?

Either way you're ignoring their actual sensitivities, so it's at root
the same (the former manifests as patronizing, the latter as rude).

On the other hand, sometimes there are better terms to use. It's one
thing to pull "beautiful is better than ugly" out of a poem in which
most of the lines follow that same pattern of "<positive adjective> is
better than <negative adjective>", breaking the symmetry.

It's another when replacing "master/slave" comes up, and it's pointed
out that there *are* more precise terms, such as "original/replica",
in some contexts. I'm of two minds as whether it's worth the churn,
but if others are willing to do the work ;-) of finding all the uses,
proposing replacements, and submitting the PRs, I'd be willing to
review and add my $.02 as to whether there's actually an improvement.

I would also disagree with Greg Ewing's take on "robot". It may have
meant "slave" in the original Czech, but in English it has strong
connotations of "automaton" and an inherent lack of autonomy, quite
different from a human slave's flexibility to perform any command, and
the way a human slave's autonomy is stripped by force, respectively.
If Czech-speakers want to offer their opinions, I'm listening, but I
wouldn't be surprised to find that their consensus opinion in 2018 to
be that the English usage of robot is more prevalent than the Czech
original meaning.

Steve

[David Mertz]

You have missed the use of *reductio ad absurdum* in my comment and several others. This argument structure is one of the fundamental forms of good logical reasoning, and shows nothing dismissive or insulting. The specifics book titles I used were carefully chosen, and you'd do well to think about why those specific books (and read all of them, if you haven't).

[David Mertz]

On Sun, Sep 16, 2018, 4:34 AM Stephen J. Turnbull <turnbull....@u.tsukuba.ac.jp> wrote:

I would also disagree with Greg Ewing's take on "robot".  It may have meant "slave" in the original Czech, but in English it has strong connotations of "automaton" and an inherent lack of autonomy, quite different from a human slave's flexibility to perform any command,

Robot doesn't mean "slave" in Czech, but rather "serf." Serfdom was/is a terrible institution, but nothing best so terrible as the Atlantic slave trade of the 15th-19th C which is what modern usage tends to indicates. Moreover, the morpheme "rōb" is commonplace in Slavic languages to mean "work" in a more general sense.

Wikipedia: Karl Čapek's fictional story postulated the technological creation of artificial human bodies without souls, and the old theme of the feudal robota class eloquently fit the imagination of a new class of manufactured, artificial workers.

[Steve Barnes]

On 16/09/2018 10:45, David Mertz wrote:
> You have missed the use of *reductio ad absurdum* in my comment and
> several others. This argument structure is one of the fundamental forms
> of good logical reasoning, and shows nothing dismissive or insulting.
> The specifics book titles I used were carefully chosen, and you'd do
> well to think about why those specific books (and read all of them, if
> you haven't).
>

For the ultimate "reductio as absurdum" it is possible to argue that one
(1) is elitist and zero (0) is nihilist therefore to avoid offence we
should scrap the entire binary system and with it digital computers -
then the whole argument becomes moot until someone implements python on
an analogue computer. ;-)

--
Steve (Gadget) Barnes
Any opinions in this message are my personal opinions and do not reflect
those of my employer.

---
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
https://www.avg.com

[Jan Claeys]

On Fri, 2018-09-14 at 22:09 +0200, Davide Rizzo wrote:
> At one Python conference in Italy, participants were given an
> elegantly designed and well-crafted t-shirt with a writing in large
> characters that read "Beautiful is better than ugly" in reference to
> the Zen of Python. Back home, a close person who is not a Python
> programmer nor familiar with PEP 20 saw the t-shirt. They were
> horrified by the out-of-context sentence for reasons similar to what
> has been already stated in support of this argument. It prompted them
> of lookism and judgmentality, and found the message to be disturbing
> in its suggestion to compare by some standard of beauty and to
> discriminate. Let me add some context: this person is socially and
> politically active (maybe what someone would call a "SJW"; definitely
> not what anyone would call "politically correct"), and is specially
> sensitive to issues of discrimination and sexism. This was enough,
> though, for me to wonder what kind of message I would be projecting
> by wearing that writing on me. I've been since then discouraged to
> ever wear the t-shirt in any public context.

This illustrates that by taking something out of context, it can
(appear to) get an entirely different meaning. This can happen on
purpose or (as in this case, I assume) by accident.

It doesn't say anything about the complete text of the “Zen of Python”
(which to any layperson probably looks quite like unintelligible
gibberish).

The lesson to be learned is: “be careful when taking something out of
context”.

--
Jan Claeys

[Wes Turner]

It may be most relevant to interpret the poem as it is: culled from various writings of the community.

What do we need to remember? Our criticism can hurt fragile feelings and egos; which we need to check at the door.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_dysmorphic_disorder

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensation (time spent disambiguating)

Python is primarily an online community; where words are our appearance.

"Most reasonable people would understand that" we're *clearly* talking about engineering design aesthetic.

Not body dysmorphia.

Objectively,

Compared to C,

Python is fat and slow.

It's not fast, but it's pretty,

and that's all it has going for it,

In this crazy world.

Mean losers,

T-shirts.

[Wes Turner]

On Sunday, September 16, 2018, Wes Turner <wes.t...@gmail.com> wrote:

It may be most relevant to interpret the poem as it is: culled from various writings of the community.

What do we need to remember? Our criticism can hurt fragile feelings and egos; which we need to check at the door.

Dear Python community,

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_dysmorphic_disorder

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensation (time spent disambiguating)

Python is primarily an online community; where words are our appearance.

We should strive to be concise.

"I don't like it because it's ugly" is not a helpful code review.

Subjective assertions of superiority are only so useful in context to the objectives (e.g. reducing complexity)

 

"Most reasonable people would understand that" we're *clearly* talking about engineering design aesthetic.

Not body dysmorphia.

Objectively,

That's subjective 

Compared to C,

C has different objectives for a different market.

 

Python is fat and slow.

Python is plenty fast for people all over the world who are solving problems for others.

 

It's not fast, but it's pretty,

and that's all it has going for it,

Python has lots of things to be proud of and confident about (i.e. helping others and paying bills).

 

In this crazy world.

Mean losers,

T-shirts.

Attention seeking AND problem solving

[Franklin? Lee]

On Sun, Sep 16, 2018 at 4:14 AM Antoine Pitrou <soli...@pitrou.net> wrote:
>
> Yeah, right.
>
> You know, when I was pointing out Calvin not being very brave by
> attacking a bunch of people without giving names, my aim was to merely
> point out how dishonest and disrespectful his attitude his. *Not* to
> encourage someone to turn his post into more of a clusterfuck of
> personal attacks.

Please give an example of an attack I made above. I see accusations,
made against adults, regarding actions.

On Sun, Sep 16, 2018, 05:45 David Mertz <me...@gnosis.cx> wrote:
>
> You have missed the use of *reductio ad absurdum* in my comment and several others. This argument structure is one of the fundamental forms of good logical reasoning, and shows nothing dismissive or insulting. The specifics book titles I used were carefully chosen, and you'd do well to think about why those specific books (and read all of them, if you haven't).

Reductio ad absurdum and mockery are not mutually exclusive. Mockery
can be thought of as a natural (though often fallacious) form of
reductio ad absurdum: the position (or person) should not be taken
seriously because the consequences are absurd.

The examples I chose were not simply coldly rational arguments, so we
can look at the extra choices made. I'm sure you can see the
difference between these two logically-equivalent arguments:
- "Assume there is a largest prime. Then we can construct a large
number which is not divisible by any prime. But that's impossible, so
there is no largest prime."
- "Since you believe there is a largest prime, we have a large number
not divisible by any prime. I'll start on that pull request to change
INT_MAX to the largest prime."

For granularity, let:
"disrespectful" := Negative respect, such as an insult.
"unrespectful" := Without proper respect, but not as bad as "disrespectful".

Other than mockery, there can be disrespectful argumentum ad absurdum.
Often, the difference between a respectful and an unrespectful
argument is how much logical effort is needed to reach the absurdity,
because that is the effort that wasn't put in, or incorrectly put in.
(Thinking off the top of my head, a slippery slope argument is often
unrespectful.)

While people often make small logical mistakes when new to a subject
or idea, or miss immediate consequences, there are many cases where
the person has clearly thought about their position before, and a
logically-obvious one-line counter is an insult to their effort, if
not their intelligence. If you do think you have an obvious one-line
counter, even after considering whether you misunderstood the original
argument, then putting it as a question is more respectful than
stating it conclusively, which is more respectful than making it
sarcastically.

More generally, a respectful argument aims to convince your opponents,
while an argument made with the audience in mind can be unrespectful,
and an argument which mostly appeals to those that already agree is
usually disrespectful.

In your specific case, you used sarcasm, a one-liner argument (listing
a few titles without elaborating on their relevance), slippery slope,
talked about book-burning when the OP was suggesting a change for
future work, and focused on the word "beautiful" where the OP focused
on "ugly". Was your post crafted to convince the OP, or for the sake
of a laugh? Do you believe that your post could convince any of your
opponents? Would you have said it that way in a room where no one was
already on your side?

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Sun, 16 Sep 2018 13:32:26 -0400
"Franklin? Lee"

<leewangzh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 16, 2018 at 4:14 AM Antoine Pitrou <soli...@pitrou.net> wrote:
> >
> > Yeah, right.
> >
> > You know, when I was pointing out Calvin not being very brave by
> > attacking a bunch of people without giving names, my aim was to merely
> > point out how dishonest and disrespectful his attitude his. *Not* to
> > encourage someone to turn his post into more of a clusterfuck of
> > personal attacks.
>
> Please give an example of an attack I made above. I see accusations,
> made against adults, regarding actions.

Why would I? As you admit, you are not countering arguments, but
accusing people. I have better to do than to waste my time in this
kind of game. This mailing-list is not supposed to be a playground for
angry people.

Regards

Antoine.

[Jacco van Dorp]

Op zo 16 sep. 2018 om 05:40 schreef Franklin? Lee <leewangzh...@gmail.com>:

I am very disappointed with the responses to this thread. We have
mockery, dismissiveness, and even insinuations about OP's
psychological health. Whether or not OP is a troll, and whether or not
OP's idea has merit, that kind of response is unnecessary and
unhelpful.

Sure, I'll take your bait.

 

Jacco:
- This is completely disrespectful and way over the line. Don't try to
make a psychological evaluation from two emails, especially when it's
just someone having an idea you don't like.
    """However, if merely the word ugly being on a page can be
"harmful", what you really need is professional help, not a change to
Python. Because there's obviously been some things in your past you
need to work through."""

Is it, though ? Even more because in order for it to apply to any one person's aesthetics, you need to pull it out of context first. You need to be looking for it. Being triggered by a word this simple is not exactly a sign of mental stability. I know a girl who's been raped more than she can count - but the word doesn't trigger her like this(only makes her want to beat up rapists). If people can do that, then surely a playground insult wont reduce you to tears, right ?

 

- Mockery.
    """If we have to ban "Ugly" for american sensitivities, then
perhaps we need to ban a number of others for china's sensitivities.
Where will it end ?"""

Well, on the internet, the word "nigger" is already basically banned for american sensibilities, while the version in dutch, my language, is "neger", which doesn't really have any racist connotation, probably because the amount of slaves that have ever been in what's currently the netherlands, has been negligible. However, it's use is effectively banned because some other culture considers it offensive to use. Why should your culture be my censorship ? And it's no coincidence I used china there - it's notorious for it's censorship. If merely labeling a word as "offensive" is sufficient to ban it, I daresay they'd mark a whole lot more words as offensive. And why would their opinion be any less valid than yours ? 

Don't think you're special - you're not. If you want to give yourself the power to ban words for offensive, you're giving that same power to everyone. And since offensive is subjective, it means anybody could ban any word, since you couldn't tell the difference between real or fake offense. 

Therefore, it is a disastrous idea and I'll predict the end of Python if we go down that route. 

 

[Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer]

@SamanthaQuan

Beautiful is a degree above the good. Beautiful in the context applied defines the refined, with a nuance of excellence.

As the definition of beauty is not standard, it is what appeals to an individual. It is not only about passing the functional quality test, it is about perfection. 

Fields of application varies. A mathematician might, after going through some derivations express : "Beautiful !"

The dictionary here

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/beautiful

defines it as

---

1Pleasing the senses or mind aesthetically.

‘beautiful poetry’

‘a beautiful young woman’

1.1 Of a very high standard; excellent

‘she spoke in beautiful English’

---

The word beautiful hints to the fact that code authorship or software craftmanship is an art, a science. It presumes that as time unfolds itself, masters must be produced to further excellence. It encourages high standards.

Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer
Mauritius

[Franklin? Lee]

On Sun, Sep 16, 2018 at 2:04 PM Antoine Pitrou <soli...@pitrou.net> wrote:
>
> On Sun, 16 Sep 2018 13:32:26 -0400
> "Franklin? Lee"
> <leewangzh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Sun, Sep 16, 2018 at 4:14 AM Antoine Pitrou <soli...@pitrou.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > Yeah, right.
> > >
> > > You know, when I was pointing out Calvin not being very brave by
> > > attacking a bunch of people without giving names, my aim was to merely
> > > point out how dishonest and disrespectful his attitude his. *Not* to
> > > encourage someone to turn his post into more of a clusterfuck of
> > > personal attacks.
> >
> > Please give an example of an attack I made above. I see accusations,
> > made against adults, regarding actions.
>
> Why would I? As you admit, you are not countering arguments, but
> accusing people. I have better to do than to waste my time in this
> kind of game. This mailing-list is not supposed to be a playground for
> angry people.

I made accusations and explained them. You accused me of making
personal attacks, but won't back it up when challenged, saying that
it'd be a waste of time. If it's not important, why make the
accusation in the first place?

I have thought about making arguments and explanations, but erased
them because it could distract from this point. I'm far less concerned
about the proposal (in either direction) than about the treatment of a
new user and a controversial proposal. The harm of that is here and
now.

[Paul Moore]

On Mon, 17 Sep 2018 at 09:40, Franklin? Lee

Please can we drop this line of discussion. It's neither productive
nor helpful, and it's skirting very close to what I'd consider to be
in violation of the CoC.

Paul

[Franklin? Lee]

On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 3:17 AM Jacco van Dorp <j.van...@deonet.nl> wrote:
>
> Op zo 16 sep. 2018 om 05:40 schreef Franklin? Lee <leewangzh...@gmail.com>:
>>

>> Jacco:
>> - This is completely disrespectful and way over the line. Don't try to
>> make a psychological evaluation from two emails, especially when it's
>> just someone having an idea you don't like.
>> """However, if merely the word ugly being on a page can be
>> "harmful", what you really need is professional help, not a change to
>> Python. Because there's obviously been some things in your past you
>> need to work through."""
>
>
> Is it, though ? Even more because in order for it to apply to any one person's aesthetics, you need to pull it out of context first. You need to be looking for it. Being triggered by a word this simple is not exactly a sign of mental stability.

Is it disrespectful to give a psychological diagnosis in a discussion?
Usually. It is dismissive (it's inarguably an ad hominem), potentially
insulting (because it's often intentionally used that way, so the
listener might interpret it that way even when it isn't intended), and
it is based on very little information. I think it's safe to assume
that you're not a trained professional, or even a well-read amateur,
since you would otherwise know how much information is fed into a
proper diagnosis, so it is also as inappropriate as giving lawyer
advice without a disclaimer, or stating your quantum telepathy ideas
as scientific "fact".

But unlike the other fields, making psychology claims about your
opponents during an argument is harmful, and not just theoretically
harmful. It's a personal attack, and tries to invalidate their right
to even be in the discussion by saying that they're fundamentally
irrational. That's harmful to both people and the discussion. Look at
how upset people get in any argument where someone accuses them of
bias, which is a weaker claim than mentally unstable.

We can go deeper. Your diagnosis is based on a single factor:
If a person is harmed by the use of the word "ugly", they need
psychological help.

Even if that were true, you go further:
Don't change Python for those people. Python should not
accommodate them. We should not be inconvenienced by the needs of the
mentally ill.

Let's say something in Python harms people with a certain mental
illness. They are getting treatment, or they don't know they need
treatment, or they declined treatment. Should Python change (patch,
document, maintain a change) to accommodate them? Or, on the other
extreme, should Python tell them, "Go away, and come back when you're
healthy"? What should they do in the meantime?

(On-topic: I think the only reasonable answer is, "It depends."
There's no slippery slope. There should be a weighing of the chance of
harm, the amount of potential harm, and the cost of the change. I
think it is not reasonable to accommodate everyone no matter the cost
(and literally no one here has argued for that; I checked), and I
think it is not reasonable to reject any accommodation if it's of a
certain type (which people here have at least argued for, though I
believe they're just not bothering to state their nuances).)

I don't think you are unsympathetic to the mentally ill. I think the
people you don't want to accommodate are actually the people who
_claim to fight_ for the mentally ill. Question: If someone proposes
an alternative that people think is better than the original, would
you still be against making a change? Will you think of it as giving
in to censorship or to the PC/SJW group?

> I know a girl who's been raped more than she can count - but the word doesn't trigger her like this(only makes her want to beat up rapists). If people can do that, then surely a playground insult wont reduce you to tears, right ?

It's complicated. Different people respond differently to different
situations. And people have differing experiences, even if those
experiences have the same label. It is hard to extrapolate from a
handful of examples, because the mind and the real world are both
complicated.

>> - Mockery.
>> """If we have to ban "Ugly" for american sensitivities, then
>> perhaps we need to ban a number of others for china's sensitivities.
>> Where will it end ?"""
>
> Well, on the internet, the word "nigger" is already basically banned for american sensibilities, while the version in dutch, my language, is "neger", which doesn't really have any racist connotation, probably because the amount of slaves that have ever been in what's currently the netherlands, has been negligible. However, it's use is effectively banned because some other culture considers it offensive to use. Why should your culture be my censorship ? And it's no coincidence I used china there - it's notorious for it's censorship. If merely labeling a word as "offensive" is sufficient to ban it, I daresay they'd mark a whole lot more words as offensive. And why would their opinion be any less valid than yours ?
>
> Don't think you're special - you're not. If you want to give yourself the power to ban words for offensive, you're giving that same power to everyone. And since offensive is subjective, it means anybody could ban any word, since you couldn't tell the difference between real or fake offense.

(Arguably, the equivalent of "neger" is "Negro", which is today
considered somewhat offensive in America, but is still used on
official forms because it's preferred by some older black Americans.
That's an interesting example of human culture.)

No one argued that others can't also object, so I don't know if
they'll see a problem with your slope. (I know of an example: "Laputa"
was a prominent name in a Miyazaki film, but it was derived (through
Jonathan Swift) from an offensive Spanish word, which the filmmakers
didn't know. One could ask if we should censor the word in foreign
localizations of the film, whether they land in Spanish-speaking
countries or not.)

But my objection wasn't that the argument was invalid, but that you
wrote it as mockery. Let me try to rewrite the same argument without
mockery.
"""You want us to remove "ugly", but isn't that only a problem to
Americans? I am not an American. Do you believe Python should
accommodate non-Americans objecting to common American words? What
groups should we listen to, and which ones can we ignore? One group
that comes to my mind is the Chinese government."""

This invites the speaker to outline the limits of their slopes, and
explain themselves further. It opens discussion, instead of trying to
close it. It respects their input, and asks for more.

[Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer]

if (out.of.subject).pingpong:

     time to let the thread go

Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer
Mauritius

[C. Titus Brown]

Hi everyone,

on behalf of the moderators… please, let’s stop discussing who accused whom of what, and either stick to the discussion at hand or be silent. If you can’t make a point without aggression or name calling, then it’s not a point you should be making. (That’s a general statement about this list and this thread, not about any one particular recent e-mail.)

thanks,
—titus

[Omar Balbuena]

I love the Zen of Python and I occasionally cite one in a commit. Usually it's either flat/nested or the one about namespaces.

I have never used beautiful/ugly. I think it would be incredibly conceited to cite it at any commit or code review. I don't think it serves anything. However I would welcome a serious attempt of rewording it (I don't have any suggestions myself though).

[Wes Turner]

I think it's meant to be ironic?

Why would that be the first sentence of a poem about software and the Python newsgroup/mailing list community?

A certain percentage of people might be offended by changing the first line (the frame of) of said poem; to "I'm better than you".

Dominance and arrogance are upsetting to a certain percentage, so that shouldn't occur. (Though arrogance tends to be the norm in many open source communities which are necessarily discerning and selective; in order to avoid amateurish mediocrity).

So, in a way, "Beautiful is better than ugly" was the CoC in the Python community for many years; so, now that the CoC is in place, the best thing to do may be to just remove the Zen of Python entirely; rather than dominate the authors' sarcastic poem until it's devoid of its intentional tone.

[Jacco van Dorp]

Op ma 17 sep. 2018 om 16:40 schreef Wes Turner <wes.t...@gmail.com>:

I think it's meant to be ironic?

Why would that be the first sentence of a poem about software and the Python newsgroup/mailing list community?

A certain percentage of people might be offended by changing the first line (the frame of) of said poem; to "I'm better than you".

Dominance and arrogance are upsetting to a certain percentage, so that shouldn't occur. (Though arrogance tends to be the norm in many open source communities which are necessarily discerning and selective; in order to avoid amateurish mediocrity).

So, in a way, "Beautiful is better than ugly" was the CoC in the Python community for many years; so, now that the CoC is in place, the best thing to do may be to just remove the Zen of Python entirely; rather than dominate the authors' sarcastic poem until it's devoid of its intentional tone.

I always considered the Zen to be about code only. I don't think I ever read the CoC, and just assumed "at least pretend to be a decent person". I don't think the CoC has anything to do with your code, right ? 

[Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer]

Zen of The Python Mailing List

>>> import that

on topic is better than off topic

the dish of toxicity is made up of opinion attacking

irony is it's fine herbs

top posting should be counselled

homeworks are not to be done

mail clients are the tastes and colours of life

a mailing list serves it's purpose, unless specified

ideas are the flagship of focus

balazing pingponging is sign of Zen explosion

RTFM has kinder alternatives

good english is preferred, but makes you not a better programmer

...

Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer
Mauritius

[James Lu]

It’s been almost a week since this “discussion” first started. Can we please stop this in the name of productive work on python-ideas? Frankly, you don’t need to reply just because you can point out something wrong with someone else’s argument. Post because it’s worthwhile to hear, not because you have something to say.

This mindless and combative attitude is a big reason why Guido was motivated to suspend himself.

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[Anders Hovmöller]

> It’s been almost a week since this “discussion” first started. Can we please stop this in the name of productive work on python-ideas?

A better use of time might be to discuss moving to a better forum system where moderation is easier/possible. Email somehow has a shape that makes those things 100% probable and you can’t easily silence discussions that are uninteresting.

/ Anders

[Franklin? Lee]

PEP 20 makes it sound like it's for the design of Python itself. The
original post was from a metadiscussion about Python's design, not
about its users' code.
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/1999-June/001951.html

By "CoC", Wes is referring to the Zen.

The official Community Code of Conduct is not just about being nice,
but about being nice for the purpose of improving Python.
https://www.python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
If you're a jerk to Python users in other contexts (maybe even in
python-list), the Code doesn't care. Your code is (usually) also
outside of the community. The Code of Conduct is about the people,
while the Zen is about the design, and PEP 8 is about the style, but
all three are about potential improvements to Python, not your
personal/professional life (though you could still apply them if you
want).

(It irks me for no real reason that something called the _Code_ of
Conduct has nothing to do with code, but that's the fault of the
mathematicians and early computer scientists for overloading an
existing word.)

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[Brett Cannon]

The below email was reported to the PSF board for code of conduct violations and then passed on to the conduct working group to decide on an appropriate response.

Based on the WG's recommendation and after discussing it with Titus, the decision has been made to ban Jacco from python-ideas. Trivializing assault, using the n-word, and making inappropriate comments about someone's mental stability are all uncalled for and entirely unnecessary to carry on a reasonable discourse of conversation that remains welcoming to others.

[Rhodri James]

On 20/09/18 19:56, Brett Cannon wrote:
> Based on the WG's recommendation and after discussing it with Titus, the
> decision has been made to ban Jacco from python-ideas. Trivializing
> assault, using the n-word, and making inappropriate comments about
> someone's mental stability are all uncalled for and entirely unnecessary to
> carry on a reasonable discourse of conversation that remains welcoming to
> others.

Not a challenge to the ban in any way, but I feel the need to repeat
what I said about banning words. The moment you create that taboo, you
give the word power. That's the exact opposite of what you want to do.
It's the intent with which the word is used that matters. I've heard
all sorts of words used as insults -- "special", anyone? -- and many of
the same words used innocently or affectionately.

Banning bad or insulting behaviour is fine. Banning words is a bad path
to go down.

--
Rhodri James *-* Kynesim Ltd

[Philipp A.]

The main clause differentiating bad, weaponizable CoCs from good ones is

"Assume good faith"

Everything will be OK if good faith can reasonably be assumed (E.g. when someone uses a word which is only offensive based on context)

On the other hand, e.g. obvious racial slurs never have a place on a discussion board about a programming language. How can one possibly say them in good faith?

[Antoine Pitrou]

Hi,

For the record I was surprised to see the word "slur" pop up
quite often recently, while I'd only heard "insult" before. I
looked it up and it doesn't help that the French translation seems to
be the same in both cases (it's "insulte").

Then I came upon this thread where someone pretty much asks the same
question:
https://www.reddit.com/r/EnglishLearning/comments/6bjgwq/slur_vs_insult/

and the comments there are interesting as to how complicated and
difficult to grasp the cultural landscape of linguistic taboos really
is.

Regards

Antoine.

[Elazar]

On Fri, Sep 21, 2018, 16:56 Philipp A. <flying...@web.de> wrote:

The main clause differentiating bad, weaponizable CoCs from good ones is

"Assume good faith"

Everything will be OK if good faith can reasonably be assumed (E.g. when someone uses a word which is only offensive based on context)

On the other hand, e.g. obvious racial slurs never have a place on a discussion board about a programming language. How can one possibly say them in good faith?

Here's how: as a demonstration that words that are considered slurs in certain contexts (such as the word "Negro" in America) might be considered perfectly legitimate day-to-day words in another context. Even if the example was incorrect, it is still legitimate. 

Your question should be directed against the OP in the discussion, bringing up an issue completely unrelated to programming languages (probably trolling, as several people before me have pointed out). 

Elazar

[Ryan Gonzalez]

Kinda OT, but I believe the connotation is that slur is use of the word, whereas an insult is use directed at someone. 

For instance, if someone is having a conversation where they use the n-word, it's a racial slur. If they directly call someone that, it's an insult. 

--

Ryan (ライアン)
Yoko Shimomura, ryo (supercell/EGOIST), Hiroyuki Sawano >> everyone else
https://refi64.com/

[Rhodri James]

On 21/09/18 16:23, Ryan Gonzalez wrote:
> Kinda OT, but I believe the connotation is that slur is use of the word,
> whereas an insult is use directed at someone.

According to Chambers online, a slur is "a disparaging remark intended
to damage a reputation" while an insult is "a rude or offensive remark
or action" (at least in the meanings we are talking about). They have
overlapping meanings but aren't identical.

[Hasan Diwan]

English is not straightforward and is constantly evolving. -- H

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[Franklin? Lee]

On Fri, Sep 21, 2018 at 10:52 AM Elazar <ela...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 21, 2018, 16:56 Philipp A. <flying...@web.de> wrote:
>>
>> The main clause differentiating bad, weaponizable CoCs from good ones is
>>
>> "Assume good faith"
>>
>> Everything will be OK if good faith can reasonably be assumed (E.g. when someone uses a word which is only offensive based on context)
>> On the other hand, e.g. obvious racial slurs never have a place on a discussion board about a programming language. How can one possibly say them in good faith?
>
>
> Here's how: as a demonstration that words that are considered slurs in certain contexts (such as the word "Negro" in America) might be considered perfectly legitimate day-to-day words in another context. Even if the example was incorrect, it is still legitimate.

I didn't report him, and I don't agree with the ban, but I assume I'm
missing something if they felt the need to act so strongly, days after
the discussion died down.

Some words are KNOWN to be considered taboo by some. Using the word
(instead of a euphemism), especially while discussing the taboo, is an
intentional political act against those people.

Compare with "Voldemort" in the well-known series "Harry Potter". The
protagonists use the name in the presence of other, superstitious,
characters, when they intend to change the status quo. If they wanted
to have a polite conversation about it, they would use the common
euphemism for that name, because you don't want to ADD emotions to
such a conversation. (I'm intentionally using a positive example, to
keep people from feeling slighted by a negative one.)

> Your question should be directed against the OP in the discussion, bringing up an issue completely unrelated to programming languages (probably trolling, as several people before me have pointed out).

I'm one of those who believe the OP was a troll.

But you're saying that the post was also off-topic. Where would you
rather have it go? The proposal was about changing the Zen of Python.
If ANY proposed change in the Zen goes through, I'd expect to see a
discussion on python-ideas.

On the other hand, discussing taboo words in general society is less
on-topic. Tie it back to Python and how it hurts Python to ban these
words.

[C. Titus Brown]

On Fri, Sep 21, 2018 at 01:55:03PM -0400, Franklin? Lee wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 21, 2018 at 10:52 AM Elazar <ela...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Sep 21, 2018, 16:56 Philipp A. <flying...@web.de> wrote:
> >>
> >> The main clause differentiating bad, weaponizable CoCs from good ones is
> >>
> >> "Assume good faith"
> >>
> >> Everything will be OK if good faith can reasonably be assumed (E.g. when someone uses a word which is only offensive based on context)
> >> On the other hand, e.g. obvious racial slurs never have a place on a discussion board about a programming language. How can one possibly say them in good faith?
> >
> >
> > Here's how: as a demonstration that words that are considered slurs in certain contexts (such as the word "Negro" in America) might be considered perfectly legitimate day-to-day words in another context. Even if the example was incorrect, it is still legitimate.
>
> I didn't report him, and I don't agree with the ban, but I assume I'm
> missing something if they felt the need to act so strongly, days after
> the discussion died down.

Hi folks,

we have a committee-based process for making these decisions, so it
necessarily takes some time. Brett and I can make urgent decisions
but everything goes through the process.

best,
--titus