[EVALUATION] - E04 - Leadership! Google, Guido van Rossum, PSF

[Ilias Lazaridis]

[...] - (comments, code "outside the body")

def make_silly_attr_accessor(name):
def get(self, name): return getattr(self, '_'+name)
def set(self, name, value): return setattr(self, '_'+name, value)
return property(get, set)

to be used as in:

class Talker(object):
age = make_silly_attr_accessor('age')
name = make_silly_attr_accessor('name')

Finally, you could choose to use a decorator syntax instead:

[...] - (decorator example, comments)

ok, this one is nice.

-

[/REQUOTE][/REQUOTE]

Just for completeness:

I some reader has a compact solution, please post it or sent it via
email / form.

-

Mr. Martelli,

Thank you very much !!!

..

 

[DaveM]

Unfortunately, this isn't quite true. Medicine and law both require the
passing of an apprenticeship, so there's still some room for favoritism
and blackballing.

In the UK, in Medicine, House Officer jobs pretty much match the
qualification numbers. Sure, which HO post you get can give your career a
head start, but that advantage is evanescent if you can't cut the mustard.

Fouling your career by upsetting the wrong people is, OTOH, easy to do.

DaveM

 

[Anton Vredegoor]

In the UK, in Medicine, House Officer jobs pretty much match the
qualification numbers. Sure, which HO post you get can give your career a
head start, but that advantage is evanescent if you can't cut the mustard.

Fouling your career by upsetting the wrong people is, OTOH, easy to do.

Maybe not many people realize that it's also possible that *having* a
degree or having the *wrong* degree can also be a barrier. Or maybe
that's just the case in highly bureaucratic societies like the
Netherlands.

I finished a study in the social sciences, but since I refused draft I
had to do some social service work as a replacement. This was
explicitly meant to be *careerbreaking*, because if it were otherwise
it would be an advantage over other people who voluntarily went into
the preparing to kill people business. However, women, and people who
got out on a medical indication or because of surplus draftee numbers
did not have to do this. Also, during draft a lot of people got free
drivers licenses (for all vehicles). Having done draft is generally
seen as some positive contribution to society.

My social service work consisted of working as a programmer for a mad
computer scientist who just threw me out after I had doubts about
machine intelligence being feasible in less than a decade or so (and he
badly needed a publication). This completely (for science) useless and
overpayed guy (doctor at a public university) could practically do
anything he liked with me because I just had to break my career anyway
according to my social service contact person.

Before I had my degree as a social scientist I had spend many years in
the same kind of situation but then serving as an intermediary person
between a computer running statistical programs and an elderly
professor who was almost retiring but wanted to make one big
publication before he vanished into oblivion. Of course this guy was
very reluctant to let me finish my thesis because he would be without a
computer programmer then, and he was already to old to learn it
himself, while I seem to have a natural talent for handling computers,
even among people who are of my age.

Going back a little further in time, I remember a period as an intern
where I was not allowed to publish my seperate analysis of the data
*before* the same data was exhaustively studied and published by the
guy who had ordered the survey to take place (payed by government money
of course). Since this guy *never* seemed to be ready to publish
anything (personal problems, divorce and such things) my complete
internship was wasted in terms of getting anything I wrote out of this,
officially.

Now returning to being thrown out by the mad professor, I had the
choice between labeling books for the rest of my time doing social
service or finding some other careerbreaker. Luckily I had made some
friends while playing go (the oriental boardgame) and they introduced
me to their mathematics professor who subsequently let me do some
programming work there.

What struck me most was that the abyss between the social sciences and
mathematics was nearly absolute. While social scientists use
mathematics in a statistical way, their main aim is always to assert
that they are actually measuring what is supposed to be measured. This
can get quite sophisticated, for example if you give a person two
possible choices, will the data be comparable to data acquired with the
person having five possible answers? On the other hand, mathematicians
want to cut loose from the data acquiring stage as soon as possible and
just work with their formulas without making any assumptions about
reality. Lines have no thickness, scales are neat continuous variables,
correlations can be nicely separated in orthogonal factors, and so on.

After my social service was over I tried to find jobs at universities
or public institutions. I did find a research job at the headquarter of
the institution that gives money to unemployed or sick people. I soon
noticed that even before I had begun to work there it was decided that
there could be no way for me to publish anything based on data from
that site, because that data was hoarded by other people in much the
same way as the research data was guarded by the guy from my
internship.

The trick was to let me handle anonimizing and security, and being the
only person officially able to link data to persons, of course I was
not allowed to publish anything.

However, in this capacity I met a lot of people from smaller executive
departements from all over the country and I noticed that they too were
guarding their data as if their jobs depended on them, which was
probably not completely a strange assumption, from their perspective.

What they did was to send only "roughed up" data and selective parts of
the data they collected to the headquarters so that their complete
dataset never could be reconstructed and that way they always would
have that little negotiating edge to keep their jobs secure.

When I started a process to centralize the data and proposed to try and
avoid data corruption by intermediaries I found myself without a job,
really very soon.

I tried to find other jobs. I got an offer from a university, but again
there was no way to do my own research, even hinting at the possibility
of doing research made it impossible to even get the assisting job. It
was very hard to find jobs at universities with my background because
by now I was some kind of a strange amalgament of psychology, computer
science, mathematics and medical statistics person with some government
background.

There are (or at least there were at that time) huge gaps between the
different departments in the Netherlands' universities, programming was
grouped with the exact sciences and no psychologist could enter there.
Also psychologists would not let anyone enter who was 'infected' with
mathematics or computer science, except in some highly restricted
sub-departments of psychology of which there weren't very many.

After a few years I realized that trying to find a job this way was
hopeless, universities select not only by degree but also -and more
importantly- on the basis of personal contacts. Contacts which had been
broken on purpose by my government during my social service. Since I
borrowed a lot of money in order to be able to study for the title, the
idea of this being a theft of my money by the government comes to my
mind. My old professor was already retired and hadn't had many contacts
anyway, which made my situation even worse.

Now the nightmare really started. One would think that if higher
positions were not available then I would surely be eligible for
something lower in the ranks, maybe even way low down because money was
becoming very scarce.

No way. Everywhere I applied they required my complete job history and
after studing this thoroughly it was decided that I was just not the
right kind of person because the work would not be "interesting" enough
for me. They expected me to stay only a few weeks and then quit anyway
so why bother hiring me, even for the lowest of jobs. Somehow I suspect
some of these people to have been feeling threatened for their own
position if some person with higher education would work under them.

This went on for a few years, which I spent programming for myself,
discovering *Python*, doing some freelance work (but a few weeks work
in a year doesn't pay enough), and walking a lot and making photographs
along the way.

In the meantime, agencies were complaining about the large 'holes' in
my resume and, seeing that I had been unemployed for some time, my
chances of getting hired grew even slimmer. Work as a practicing
psychologist at a cliniq was impossible too because the eyes of the HRP
would become glazy immediately upon seeing my computer 'infected'
resume.

Work in a public function was impossible too, because job interviews
always seemed to gravitate towards my theory that mixing different
cultural groups (as was the theme of my thesis) was beneficial for
society as a whole *and* for the individual subculture, while official
policy at the time was demanding to give each group their own space and
language. Of course, that way a lot more government personel would be
secure of their jobs because everything had to be done seperately for
every subculture.

Next I came into the hands of special government agencies who were
handling the hard cases of unemployment. Let's get these unwilling lazy
bastards a job and stop them from parasitizing on our government money.
I was forced to comply with stupid courses which didn't help at all
(certainly not with finding me a job) and finally when nothing worked I
was forced to apply to nonsense jobs day after day just for the hell of
it, because if I still hadn't found a job I must have been a very
antisocial tough case who had to be handled the hard way.

I developed an allergy against sending resumes. I just couldn't stand
talking to human resource people about the so called 'holes' in my
resume anymore, pointing out that these holes where not holes at all
but that I had made very significant progress during that time, not the
least among these advancements was having become a very experienced
programmer.

Nothing would change the mind of future employers or employment
agencies however, most of the time one is not talking to people who
have a clue about programming anyway. So the only thing that counted on
a resume was *working* experience, and not just working experience
plain, but also it had to be exactly the right kind of working
experience, which with my diverse background would be too thin in any
specific way.

My allergy to resumes, not getting accepted because my education being
to high, my experience being to low for anything specific, brought me
me into further major trouble with the social security office. It was
just not allowed to experience traumatic consequences because of their
treatment, because what they did was just the law, and what could be
wrong with that, even if it meant forcing me day in day out to apply
for jobs till I snapped.

I decided to prevent that and rather be without any money from my
government than be continously tortured and degraded. Since then I
haven't heard anything from them anymore, I lost my social contacts one
by one because poverty doesn't make one popular, and I broke with my
family because for some reason they seem to think what the government
did was "good for me" when it nearly drove me to suicide.

Maybe this further clarifies my objections against elitist selection
procedures, based on degrees. Even if I have a degree, it always was
the wrong one.

The degree system itself is also funny. There have been many reforms in
the Netherlands and each time those working at universities have
automatically upgraded their degrees to the highest level while such
upgrading is not possible for those without a job. The system works
like this:

We have ranks a,b,c were a is lowest and c is highest.

People start at 'a' progress to 'b' and finally want to do 'c'.

However, just before reaching 'c', a new 'c' is created and the
previous categories 'a' and 'b' are taken together and put in a new
category 'a'. (I am planning to write a nice Python script showing this
algorithm sometime). This has happened a few times now in the
Netherlands and one wonders about the ingenuity with which people
having fixed positions at universities have come up with new
requirements, distinctions and titles to secure their jobs and justify
their never changing authority on all matters scientific. We have
computer science professors who cannot operate a mouse, mathematical
professors who only visit congresses or 'guide' students.

Never mind that most of the times the student does all the work and
receives almost no payment, and the professors know next to nothing
about the subject (except from times long gone) and enjoy luxurious
quarters and working conditions, foreign travel arrangements and a big
secure salary check each month.

Anton

'excuse me if I sound a bit bitter and as if suffering from a sense of
untitlement'

 

[Mike Meyer]

Why yes of course, what were you expecting?

Actually, it's not quite that way. If you make a typo reading an
attribute, you'll create an exception. There are languages where
making a typo reading an exception creates the attribute, giving it
some default value.

<mike

 

[Ilias Lazaridis]

Ilias Lazaridis wrote:
[...]

This requirement is really funny.

I thought google is somehow different.

[...]

from within this thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_frm/thread/ee84d45c6857843a/295b4b21eb503bde

"
I understand.

Ok, thus Google is flexible in this.

[sidenote: some jobs _require_ a degree by law]

So, I like Google again (in this context).
"

..

 

[Alex Martelli]

However I still maintain that I was never able to meet these fine
people you speak about and which you seem to know because the cost
involved (a few hundred euro to visit pycon for example) was too high
compared to my food budget.

Europython is cheap to attend, and has been held twice in Charleroi,
Belgium, for example -- if you're in the Netherlands, you could have
bycicled there, crashed with somebody (I've seen lots of impecunious
people offered hospitality that way), and not spent more on food than
you would by staying in the Netherlands. You'll have to invent some
better excuse, to explain why you chose not to attend it.


Alex

 

[Anton Vredegoor]

Europython is cheap to attend, and has been held twice in Charleroi,
Belgium, for example -- if you're in the Netherlands, you could have
bycicled there, crashed with somebody (I've seen lots of impecunious
people offered hospitality that way), and not spent more on food than
you would by staying in the Netherlands. You'll have to invent some
better excuse, to explain why you chose not to attend it.

I looked it up: 160 euro (early registration). My food budget is about
16 euro a week now, maybe even less if I want to keep feeding myself a
bit longer, maybe in 2003 my reserves were a bit higher than now, but I
had not yet learned then to be without a regular income, so I was very
scared to become pennyless at that time.

I am perfectly used to sleeping at other peoples' places, for example I
was at many go (baduk) tournaments and if the prices and atmosphere
would be anything comparable to that I guarantee you that I would have
been present.

IIRC I got an offer from Laura Creighton at the time to borrow me the
money, so one could say it was a choice, although by that time the
price had gone up to 270 euro.

But frankly indeed, I just don't even like to participate to events
that claim to be open for all but don't even acknowledge that the
barriers are extremely high compared to some participants budgets. Your
hype about it being cheap has a very chilling effect on my enthousiasm,
it's the same way with pypy congresses, which I also would have liked
to attend (and this thing even seems to be sponsored by public EU
money). Probably I am still a *rich* person, on a global scale, because
I live in a place with free internet (from a public library).

You *do* realize that even posting to usenet is impossible (or at least
very hard) for a lot of people, including me for at least 6 months. I
had to find someone to invite me to gmail and also a way to access my
previous internet account, which I lost access to when they cut my
phone line, to recieve the mail that finally enabled me to post via
google. Nowadays it's probably possible to open a hotmail account and
get invited to gmail from there, so one can post to usenet.

Theoretically I have now yet another option to post (except via
google), but IMO it remains true that one needs at least one link to
corruption to be able to post to usenet.

Anton

'hey, and my laptop doesn't even have a cdrom, needs almost continous
electricity, it's keyboard is broken (but it works fine with external
keyboard), and it networks via a pcmcia card with a *cable* '

 

[Anton Vredegoor]

Europython is cheap to attend, and has been held twice in Charleroi,
Belgium, for example -- if you're in the Netherlands, you could have
bycicled there, crashed with somebody (I've seen lots of impecunious
people offered hospitality that way), and not spent more on food than
you would by staying in the Netherlands. You'll have to invent some
better excuse, to explain why you chose not to attend it.

I looked it up: 160 euro (early registration). My food budget is about
16 euro a week now, maybe even less if I want to keep feeding myself a
bit longer, maybe in 2003 my reserves were a bit higher than now, but I
had not yet learned then to be without a regular income, so I was very
scared to become pennyless at that time.

I am perfectly used to sleeping at other peoples' places, for example I
was at many go (baduk) tournaments and if the prices and atmosphere
would be anything comparable to that I guarantee you that I would have
been present.

IIRC I got an offer from Laura Creighton at the time to borrow me the
money, so one could say it was a choice, although by that time the
price had gone up to 270 euro.

But frankly indeed, I just don't even like to participate to events
that claim to be open for all but don't even acknowledge that the
barriers are extremely high compared to some participants budgets. Your
hype about it being cheap has a very chilling effect on my enthousiasm,
it's the same way with pypy congresses, which I also would have liked
to attend (and this thing even seems to be sponsored by public EU
money). Probably I am still a *rich* person, on a global scale, because
I live in a place with free internet (from a public library).

You *do* realize that even posting to usenet is impossible (or at least
very hard) for a lot of people, including me for at least 6 months. I
had to find someone to invite me to gmail and also a way to access my
previous internet account, which I lost access to when they cut my
phone line, to recieve the mail that finally enabled me to post via
google. Nowadays it's probably possible to open a hotmail account and
get invited to gmail from there, so one can post to usenet.

Theoretically I have now yet another option to post (except via
google), but IMO it remains true that one needs at least one link to
corruption to be able to post to usenet.

Anton

'hey, and my laptop doesn't even have a cdrom, needs almost continous
electricity, it's keyboard is broken (but it works fine with external
keyboard), and it networks via a pcmcia card with a *cable* '

 

[Anton Vredegoor]

Europython is cheap to attend, and has been held twice in Charleroi,
Belgium, for example -- if you're in the Netherlands, you could have
bycicled there, crashed with somebody (I've seen lots of impecunious
people offered hospitality that way), and not spent more on food than
you would by staying in the Netherlands. You'll have to invent some
better excuse, to explain why you chose not to attend it.

I already sent some reply via google, got a server error, resent, got a
confirmation that my message was posted, but it doesn't show up and also
there's no way to retrieve my message except fishing in the cache?

Yesterday I had a post not showing up (in another group) but today it
was there. This makes me feel insecure enough about whether or not my
replies come through via google to start using another provider. It's
not like I'm on a secret google no fly list no? (slightly paranoic)

Anyway, I'm not typing all that again. Maybe it will show up tomorrow.
The gist of it is that for me a few hundred euros is and was a *lot* of
money, and that this talk about 'cheap to attend' irritates me a lot.

Anton

 

[rurpy]

I already sent some reply via google, got a server error, resent, got a
confirmation that my message was posted, but it doesn't show up and also
there's no way to retrieve my message except fishing in the cache?

Yesterday I had a post not showing up (in another group) but today it
was there. This makes me feel insecure enough about whether or not my
replies come through via google to start using another provider. It's
not like I'm on a secret google no fly list no? (slightly paranoic)

....

Nearly every message I've posted to c.l.p. in the last week
or so from Google has been badly delayed (12-24 hours
or more) or has disappeared.

Google seems to be quite badly broken.
Or mayby there really is a c.l.p. no fly list. I noticed this
started happening right after GvR was hired.

 

[Alex Martelli]

...
The gist of it is that for me a few hundred euros is and was a *lot* of
money, and that this talk about 'cheap to attend' irritates me a lot.

I just don't understand, always assuming you're in the Netherlands, how
attending Europython in Belgium (as opposed to Pycon in the US) could
have cost hundreds of euros. Conference registration is free to
speakers, bicycling NL->BE not costly (many were driving from NL, so
bumming a ride was far from impossible either), many attendants arranged
to "crash" for free thanks to the hospitality of others, food costs in
Belgium aren't much different from those in NL.

I'm not saying a few hundred euros is 'cheap' -- it obviously isn't, if
your income is low to nonexistent; rather, I'm wondering where that
"hundreds" amount comes from. You originally mentioned only pycon
(where the need to fly to the US, for people living in Europe, can
obviously account for "hundreds of euros" already); Europython is
specifically held in Europe to be cheaper and more convenient to attend
for Europeans, and I've always met many people there who fell in the
"income low to nonexistent" bracket for one reason or another.


Alex

 

[Anton Vredegoor]

I just don't understand, always assuming you're in the Netherlands, how
attending Europython in Belgium (as opposed to Pycon in the US) could
have cost hundreds of euros. Conference registration is free to
speakers, bicycling NL->BE not costly (many were driving from NL, so
bumming a ride was far from impossible either), many attendants arranged
to "crash" for free thanks to the hospitality of others, food costs in
Belgium aren't much different from those in NL.

Ah, I see. You're approaching this from a 'speaker' scenario. You
already have a lot of contacts, know where you can sleep, where to eat
and so on.

I'm not saying a few hundred euros is 'cheap' -- it obviously isn't, if
your income is low to nonexistent; rather, I'm wondering where that
"hundreds" amount comes from. You originally mentioned only pycon
(where the need to fly to the US, for people living in Europe, can
obviously account for "hundreds of euros" already); Europython is
specifically held in Europe to be cheaper and more convenient to attend
for Europeans, and I've always met many people there who fell in the
"income low to nonexistent" bracket for one reason or another.

Now going back to my claim that elitism is bad, I think you are the
perfect proof of my point. You live in luxurious (with respect to
community, education and financial aspects of being a computer scientist
or programmer) conditions and can just not understand why some people
have problems entering that same environment and privileged conditions
as yourself. This attitude is very common and needs only some kind
Blair-alike kind of selfhypnosis in order to effectively not being aware
of lying.

What is shunned is any form selfanalysis, because it would immediately
reveal that you yourself are violently keeping all these people out of
opportunities (the backstabbing), in your case for example by requesting
certain degrees, without realizing that what you are selecting for is
not what you think it is. It is selection for socialization and
belonging to some kind of social group, not any mental ability really,
not even the likeliness of being able to grasp Haskell which you somehow
seem to link to having a mathematical education.

Seriously, this is just a fraction of a unit above craniometry and you
would be wiser if you dropped this attitude.

Anton

 

[Alex Martelli]

I looked it up: 160 euro (early registration). My food budget is about

_Free for conference staff_: i.e., you could choose to contribute either
by volunteering your work to help organize and run the conference, or by
paying. This is a reasonably common arrangement at community-run
conferences. Other conferences, such as Euro Oscon 2005 in Amsterdam,
which was professionally run, are free for _speakers_.

But frankly indeed, I just don't even like to participate to events
that claim to be open for all but don't even acknowledge that the
barriers are extremely high compared to some participants budgets. Your

The secret is to get involved early, and actively contribute your time
and energy and skills; then, your budget will not be affected.

hype about it being cheap has a very chilling effect on my enthousiasm,

If you have enthusiasm, show it actively, by giving positive
contributions in organizing and running the conference, or, depending on
the conference, by speaking at it. THIS makes it cheap.

Some conferences may have a little budget (put together by pooling the
contributions of those who choose to pay to attend, minus venue costs)
for "special invitees", that may attend for free, in order to allow
participation to a few who were unable to actively contribute as
organizing staff, and couldn't make it otherwise; in some cases this may
extend to contributing to travel expenses. Such budget is always very
limited, so just a few people may be helped this way, but if you're
active in the community, even if unable to actually help as staff, it's
worth applying (early on, and together with an offer to help to whatever
limited extent you may despite geography, of course).

it's the same way with pypy congresses, which I also would have liked

I know of no such things as pypy "congresses". There are pypy
*sprints*, and there is no cost to register for them -- all you have to
do is show up and work (coding, documenting, etc).

to attend (and this thing even seems to be sponsored by public EU
money).

50%, yes (the other 50% must come from private contributions, that's a
EU rule for research projects). It used to be thought that some of the
EU money could be used to help pay for sprint participants' travel
expenses, but apparently something has gone wrong on that score
(probably some EU administrative requirement) -- I didn't ever see any
of the travel-expense-help money that was promised to me on one
occasion, so I had to swallow that cost myself.

However, pypy sprints have been held, for example, in Amsterdam, so for
a NL resident travel costs (and there never were any other) should have
been truly minute.

google), but IMO it remains true that one needs at least one link to
corruption to be able to post to usenet.

If you define every academic center and every private firm as
"corruption", yep -- Usenet is typically accessed through those.


Alex

 

[Alex Martelli]

Ah, I see. You're approaching this from a 'speaker' scenario. You
already have a lot of contacts, know where you can sleep, where to eat

I am active in the community, and have long been, trying to help out to
the best of my abilities. Should I travel to some place X "on a
shoestring", while I wouldn't necessarily know _beforehand_ where to
sleep or eat, I would be able to ask around and see if anyone can offer
me a place to sleep (and maybe some food), just as I've offered them in
the past to friends visiting me in similar conditions.

This is the way communities _work_: you always offer help, as much as
you can, and you may (if you ever need it) get some help in return.

Now going back to my claim that elitism is bad, I think you are the
perfect proof of my point. You live in luxurious (with respect to
community, education and financial aspects of being a computer scientist
or programmer) conditions and can just not understand why some people
have problems entering that same environment and privileged conditions
as yourself.

I currently live in excellent ways, yes, but have no problem at all
understanding why some (indeed many) people, at least at some times in
their lives, do not -- the reasons are many and varied, but I have known
and often befriended huge numbers of people in "down and out"
situations, and in a few cases been able to help them back up. People
who attempt to *guilt-trip* me into helping have never been and will
never been in that lot: in this way, I'm definitely not a typical, guilt
driven "bleeding heart". I try to help people who are trying to help
themselves, and the kind of mixed whining and attacks which you are
producing is a great example of the very opposite: you don't want help
getting up, you want to drag others down. That's a game I don't play.

This attitude is very common and needs only some kind
Blair-alike kind of selfhypnosis in order to effectively not being aware
of lying.

What is shunned is any form selfanalysis, because it would immediately
reveal that you yourself are violently keeping all these people out of
opportunities (the backstabbing), in your case for example by requesting
certain degrees, without realizing that what you are selecting for is
not what you think it is.

I am perfectly aware of what university degrees mean and don't mean: in
a situation of asymmetric information, they're signals (ones somewhat
hard to fake) about how much somebody believes in themselves and are
willing to invest in themselves. The literature is quite vast and
exhaustive on this analysis, and I'm reasonably well-read in it, even
though it's not my professional field.

The mental jump from this to "violently" and "backstabbing" singles you
out as a particularly weird lunatic, of course. But it's not quite as
laughable as your unsupported assumption about "lack of self-analysis",
resting only on your erroneous premise that "it would immediately
reveal" these absurdities. The unexamined life is not worth living, and
I do examine mine, but what the examination reveals has absolutely
nothing to do with what you baldly assert it would.

It is selection for socialization and
belonging to some kind of social group, not any mental ability really,

Both: there are people who belong and are socialized but just lack the
mental ability (including sticktoitiveness and stamina) to stay the
course, and others who, despite coming from the most disadvantaged
backgrounds, still make it all the way through, bases on sheer ability
and determination. Adding the "or equivalent", and "or equivalent
experience", clauses, as present in many of our job offers, tries to
widen the catchment area to at least some people who didn't make it but
can still demonstrate they have the "mental abilities" in question.

not even the likeliness of being able to grasp Haskell which you somehow
seem to link to having a mathematical education.

My working hypothesis in the matter is that there is a mindset, a kind
or way of thinking, which helps with both grasping FP languages AND
grasping abstract mathematical disciplines.

Seriously, this is just a fraction of a unit above craniometry and you
would be wiser if you dropped this attitude.

And hired hundreds of thousands of people a year (that's about the
number of resumes we get now, WITH the current job offers) without
selection? Sure, that would definitely ensure wisdom. Yeah, right.

You're so pathetic you aren't even funny.


Alex

 

[Hans Nowak]

Now going back to my claim that elitism is bad, I think you are the
perfect proof of my point. You live in luxurious (with respect to
community, education and financial aspects of being a computer scientist
or programmer) conditions and can just not understand why some people
have problems entering that same environment and privileged conditions
as yourself. This attitude is very common and needs only some kind
Blair-alike kind of selfhypnosis in order to effectively not being aware
of lying.

Tony Blair, or the Blair Witch project?

 

[Steve Holden]

Alex Martelli wrote:




Ah, I see. You're approaching this from a 'speaker' scenario. You
already have a lot of contacts, know where you can sleep, where to eat
and so on.

If you can't afford to go to conferences, don't bitch about it if you
are (as you apparently claim to be) impecunious by choice.

I personally expended a lot of effort to reduce the costs of US
conference attendance by converting the International Python Conferences
(expensive, "professionally" organised) into PyCon (cheap and cheerful,
community-oriented). It's my understanding that EuroPython is even more
community-oriented than PyCon.

Maybe you just weren't prepared to *ask* about how to attend cheaply?

Now going back to my claim that elitism is bad, I think you are the
perfect proof of my point. You live in luxurious (with respect to
community, education and financial aspects of being a computer scientist
or programmer) conditions and can just not understand why some people
have problems entering that same environment and privileged conditions
as yourself. This attitude is very common and needs only some kind
Blair-alike kind of selfhypnosis in order to effectively not being aware
of lying.

On the available evidence that seems completely untrue. Alex, as I know
from personal experience, has no problems accepting the material rewards
of a lifetime spent developing expertise, but that doesn't make him
elitist. I have seen him helping Python programmers without any monetary
reward (and he got precious little for all the time he spent as a
technical editor of "Python Web Programming"), and I know him to be
quite far from elitist.

What is shunned is any form selfanalysis, because it would immediately
reveal that you yourself are violently keeping all these people out of
opportunities (the backstabbing), in your case for example by requesting
certain degrees, without realizing that what you are selecting for is
not what you think it is. It is selection for socialization and
belonging to some kind of social group, not any mental ability really,
not even the likeliness of being able to grasp Haskell which you somehow
seem to link to having a mathematical education.

Are there *any* mirrors in your life?

Seriously, this is just a fraction of a unit above craniometry and you
would be wiser if you dropped this attitude.

I think the chip on your shoulder is forcing you to stand crooked.

How sad the world isn't organised the way *you* think it should be. Of
course this naturally means the world needs changing, not you ... or are
you just "linear combinations of social peer pressure vectors"?

regards
Steve

 

[Steve Holden]

Anton Vredegoor wrote:
[...]

But frankly indeed, I just don't even like to participate to events
that claim to be open for all but don't even acknowledge that the
barriers are extremely high compared to some participants budgets. Your
hype about it being cheap has a very chilling effect on my enthousiasm,
it's the same way with pypy congresses, which I also would have liked
to attend (and this thing even seems to be sponsored by public EU
money). Probably I am still a *rich* person, on a global scale, because
I live in a place with free internet (from a public library).

[...]
Well, if you can organise conferences that have lower costs of
attendance might I suggest you go ahead and do so? Personally I found
that venues were remarkably unhelpful in wanting to be rewarded for
their donations of facilities.

I'm not saying that conferences *can't* be organised more cheaply than
PyCon and EuroPython, just that to do so would take a considerable extra
level of effort that those of us who have compromised to the extent of
wanting to earn a living just can't give up enough time to manage.

So get off your soapbox and do something.

'hey, and my laptop doesn't even have a cdrom, needs almost continous
electricity, it's keyboard is broken (but it works fine with external
keyboard), and it networks via a pcmcia card with a *cable* '

What do you want, a medal? You've made life choices, which is fine. Just
don't moan about the inevitable and predictable consequences of those
choices. Instead enjoy that advantages (like you don't have to spend
weeks at a time away from home working for clients or teaching classes,
for example). Everything has its compensations. If you *could* bring
down the cost of computer conferences the world would be forever grateful.

regards
Steve

 

[Alex Martelli]

On the available evidence that seems completely untrue. Alex, as I know
from personal experience, has no problems accepting the material rewards
of a lifetime spent developing expertise, but that doesn't make him
elitist.

I guess what DOES make me an elitist is that I'm perfectly happy to see
greater material rewards go to those who have greater skills or are more
inclined to exert constructive effort. NOT to the skewed extent one
observes in some countries -- I think countries such as Denmark, Japan,
Sweden, and Belgium, with Gini indices of 25 or less, strike a better
balance than ones such as the UK or Italy, with 36, not to mention the
US's 40 or Brazil's 60 (particularly because it's far from certain, in
high-Gini-index countries, that the "greater material rewards" are
actually mostly flowing to the elite who I think _deserves_ them, the
people who work hard and successfully and thus contribute to everybody's
benefit, as opposed to, people whose only substantial "contribution" has
been to get born in the right family). But, that's another issue.

I have seen him helping Python programmers without any monetary
reward (and he got precious little for all the time he spent as a
technical editor of "Python Web Programming"),

Actually, I got the enormous pleasure of enjoying your work, and of
helping you (and helping friends is always a joy!) AND the whole
programming community (by helping you enhance a book that was already
good to start with). _Material_ rewards are not the only ones that
matter, not by a great deal!

and I know him to be quite far from elitist.

I guess you and I have in mind different meanings for the word
"elitist", because, as above outlined, I do consider myself one. Even
though I believe in the "wisdom of crowds", I'm definitely anything but
a *populist* -- the "wise crowd", as I see it, is one where each
individual makes up his or her own mind on their own criteria, all
different but all compatible with rationality, as opposed to "following
the herd" or "fashion".


Alex

 

[Armin Rigo]

Hi Alex,

50%, yes (the other 50% must come from private contributions, that's a
EU rule for research projects). It used to be thought that some of the
EU money could be used to help pay for sprint participants' travel
expenses, but apparently something has gone wrong on that score
(probably some EU administrative requirement) -- I didn't ever see any
of the travel-expense-help money that was promised to me on one
occasion, so I had to swallow that cost myself.

This is not the whole truth. We have some procedure now for funding
travel costs, although it's admittedly very bureaucratic :-(

Anyway, independently of this, there are some people we are happy to see
come back again and again to PyPy sprints even though we know their budget
is extremely limited. We have always arranged things for them to minimize
the costs. It's nothing like a "congress" where you have to pay XXX/day
for having water and cake brought to the tables by the staff at 10am. I
can certainly say that attending a PyPy sprint is not expensive at all;
I'd expect the major problem to be rather to find a week's free time for
it.

On the bureaucratic side: Alex, we *have* a procedure at this point, and
we have been trying to contact you several time in the past months -- with
no success as far as I know, so I'll try via comp.lang.python this time
If you still feel like seeing your money back in exchange for some
papers to fill and sign, please show up...


A bientot,

Armin

 

[Armin Rigo]

Hi Alex,

50%, yes (the other 50% must come from private contributions, that's a
EU rule for research projects). It used to be thought that some of the
EU money could be used to help pay for sprint participants' travel
expenses, but apparently something has gone wrong on that score
(probably some EU administrative requirement) -- I didn't ever see any
of the travel-expense-help money that was promised to me on one
occasion, so I had to swallow that cost myself.

This is not the whole truth. We have some procedure now for funding
travel costs, although it's admittedly very bureaucratic :-(

Anyway, independently of this, there are some people we are happy to see
come back again and again to PyPy sprints even though we know their budget
is extremely limited. We have always arranged things for them to minimize
the costs. It's nothing like a "congress" where you have to pay XXX/day
for having water and cake brought to the tables by the staff at 10am. I
can certainly say that attending a PyPy sprint is not expensive at all;
I'd expect the major problem to be rather to find a week's free time for
it.

On the bureaucratic side: Alex, we *have* a procedure at this point, and
we have been trying to contact you several time in the past months -- with
no success as far as I know, so I'll try via comp.lang.python this time
If you still feel like seeing your money back in exchange for some
papers to fill and sign, please show up...


A bientot,

Armin