Inclusive communications expectations in Python spaces

[tim.one (Tim Peters)]

@pitrou

This community has always been “a game played by someone else’s rules” in my regard. It has never really been this nice and welcoming place that some people are fantasizing about.

POV is vital here. I believe you, but I can only speak from my own POV. So let’s skip to the end:

(FTR, I vaguely remember a PSF dinner ~15 years ago that was absolutely dismal - and I’m not talking about the food, though it was no reconfort either )

Believe it or not, very different context. By “the early days”, I don’t have 15 years ago in mind, but more like 30 years ago. From my POV, “the early days” were over by the time the PSF was founded.

In the truly early days, nobody was trying to, e.g., “foster a community”. We were working our asses off to write tens of thousands of lines of what we hoped would be world-class code. Pure nerds, and nobody cared about anything other than whether a person (regardless of any demographic marker or “identity group” they may present with) could contribute to that single-minded goal.

Very far from ideal for “everyone” of course, but that wasn’t the aim. For example, people who thrived in that environment:

• Had to be fluent in English.
• Almost always had to be fluent in C, including being acutely aware of the many ways in which various C compilers could give different behavior for the same code.
• Usually needed to be a bona fide expert in the domain to which they were contributing.
• Couldn’t need significant hand-holding, mentoring, or management - there was nobody to play the other role, outside of Guido’s extremely limited time.
• Had to be assertive, if not downright pushy. They had to pick their area(s) on their own, and sell their results on their merits.
• Had to be able to communicate effectively via computer-based 7-bit ASCII plain text media.

I could go on, but I’ll spare everyone .

No project can (let alone “shoud”) remain in that mode, but, for the duration, things like a contemporary notion of “diversity” were neither pursued nor avoided. Getting code written was all that mattered. You’re gay? Nobody cared. French? Likewise, provided you could communicate with Guido. Trans? I have no idea whether any trans people were there in the early days (it’s especially hard to guess from a mailing-list post), but, again, it mattered not one whit.

It’s in this highly qualified sense that I meant it was very welcoming at the start. Which, indeed, means that in fact almost nobody was welcome - paradoxical, I know .

As the “code deficit” diminished, more time freed up for “community-oriented” efforts, and things changed, For example, of the bullet points above, I had most natural sympathy for those not meeting the “assertive” part. I was painfully shy as a child, and dreaded working with others. So I made a point of reading, for years, every single post on c.l.py, in part to give some help and an encouraging word to newbies, especially those seemingly apologetic for their mere existence.

Very few of those ever went on to make significant contributions to CPython’s code, but that was no longer the all-encompassing goal.

All things pass, but one of the constants is that I know of no organization anywhere, ever, in which absolutely all people were truly welcome. There are always long lists of conditions, both explicit & implicit.

I think the PSF turned out “better” than most in that respect, but humans are tribal animals, and there will always be in-groups and out-groups. That won’t change, but we can at least combat the ugly aspects of it.