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by scrollaway 3440 days ago
Because some people are hateful by nature and see Guido as Satan incarnate for "hating Python 2".

And no, I'm not exaggerating, you just need to look at the comments:

https://github.com/naftaliharris/placeholder/issues/47#issue...

I read through that thread the other day and it breaks my heart to know that there are people who think like that. Honestly.

On various occasions I've reasoned (and not reasoned) with the most absurd people, there is always some way to understand where the craziest of logic comes from. But here, I'm just sad.

And I'm especially sad because I've seen similar comments on HN (even just the other day). So really, this goes out to anyone who works in tech and feels like this either about Python or about any open source project: Treat your FOSS maintainers with some human decency.

It's not the first time I say it, and every time I say it there's always some people nodding at this; "oh yes, of course, well who acts like that really?", those same people turning around a week later, flaming Lennart Poettering for whatever software du jour the guy wrote.

sighs

4 comments

Treat your FOSS maintainers with some human decency.

The same could be said about politicians, too......although they are easy to ridicule. It makes it hard to get good leaders when no sane person would choose to endure all the abuse a political candidate gets.

Except most FOSS maintainers don't have glory or money. They do it for the project. While politicians rarely do it for the country. In all my life, I've never heard one I deeply respect that was elected. I see many FOSS maintainers I respect that are in charge.
They should name it Monty. A little humor will help with the tension.
Or "Parrot".
Was brought up, but rejected, as it clashes with the perl 6 VM
I don't use Python, but there are some super cringy naming suggestions in that thread.

This is the kind of thing where you are appealing to a legacy user base and there's no reason to get smirky about it. Something like Twothon, Bithon (not good for obv reasons), Zweithon, and so forth would much better communicate the intent of the project IMO.

Team Red, Team Blue, Team Three, Team Two

(no direct relation to political parties intended)