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> Since I released the book in 2010 I have given it freely to about 12.5 million people. Amazing, what an achievement! > Before my books there was this genera

> Since I released the book in 2010 I have given it freely to about 12.5 million people. Amazing, what an achievement! > Before my books there was this general belief in computing that only “special” people could learn to code, and that it was pointless to teach anyone who didn’t start when they were 12. ... Before I wrote Learn Python The Hard Way programming education books either patronizingly assumed you were a child, or assumed you’d already been programming for years. Hmm, I don't think this book was as revolutionary as described, but that doesn't take anything away from how good Learn Python the Hard Way is. > Then I recently found out that members of the Python Software Foundation (PSF) have been actively trying to have my book removed from other books and websites. I received several chats logs from trusted associates that show PSF members contacting authors and demanding that they stop referencing my books. Believe it or not, it’s because I said Python 3’s strings suck or that Python 3 sucks. I’m not kidding. They are so petty that they are actively trying to destroy the one book that is potentially helping the most people become Python programmers simply because…I don’t like how they implemented Python 3. WWWWHHHHAAAATTTT???!! If this is true, the Python Software Foundation should be ashamed.

jachee 9y ago
Re: PSF: Agreed. The good news is that the author will be compensated for this work. Sadly it makes me, personally, regret my time investment and trust in python.
- yladiz 9y ago
  I'm curious what proof the author has about this. Is there actual proof that the PSF is trying to undermine his work?
- robertlagrant 9y ago
  @jachee there were many issues with LPTHW, despite its cool branding. Here's a list compiled by some who had to repeatedly walk people who used it through the many problems it introduced to their learning process: https://sopython.com/wiki/LPTHW_Complaints https://sopython.com/wiki/LPTHW_Complaints I hope you carry on with Python!
thehardsphere 9y ago
I think it's less than he said that Python 3 sucks, and more that he had a completely incorrect and misleading explanation of how Python 3 is not Turing complete and thus nobody should use it over Python 2. Then when he was hit the Internet backdraft, he pretended that it was an elaborate joke instead of evidence of his massive incompetence.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  Is it even possible for any non-trivial programming language to not be Turing-complete?
  - thehardsphere 9y ago
    I think the answer is "No", but it depends on where you draw the line at "trivial" and "programming language." I think ANSI SQL isn't Turing complete. But I don't consider that a programming language. I think all modern general purpose programming languages are Turing complete. That is, programs from general purpose programming languages can be re-written in any other Turing complete language. Not to be confused with the Zed Shaw "joke" that a programming language is not Turing complete if its interpreter does not run source code written in another Turing complete language, completely unmodified.
scrollaway 9y ago
> If this is true, the Python Software Foundation should be ashamed. It's true and seriously misleading. He's edited it a lot since (and even toned down its title), but the blog post he wrote against Python 3 was a FUD-filled incoherent piece. You can absolutely expect members of the Python community to be disappointed. A lot of those members are people who learned from Shaw and to see him write a piece like that is heartbreaking. The people on /r/Python who called for the removal of links to his resources (because yeah, it's not the PSF actively seeking out websites, it's the websites' members wanting him gone), those people were not "out for vengeance", they were not willing to link to material which actively campaigned against where the community was moving to. He may be trying to position himself as one, but Zed Shaw was not a voice of reason who would point out the Python 3 flaws which nobody else dared criticize. Plenty of others criticized Python 3. Zed was actually trying to harm the move to it. Congrats on the book, and I'm glad he changed his mind, but I have no sympathy to his complaints there. PS: This is what happened to processing durations when I upgraded our Hearthstone log parsing pipeline from Python 2.7 to Python 3.6 after Amazon finally made the latter available on AWS Lambda: https://twitter.com/Adys/status/878985322436206592 https://twitter.com/Adys/status/878985322436206592
- kartD 9y ago
  Your last point is slightly misleading, you're comparing Python 3.6 (2016ish) with Python 2.7(2008), it better be faster
  - scrollaway 9y ago
    I just meant to include that as a real world example of the effects of upgrading from 2 to 3. But the blog post in question does date back to 2016 so I don't know how that's unfair :)
  - orf 9y ago
    It's actually comparing 2.7.12 (2016) with 3.6 (2016). Not that the release date has much to do with the benchmark, mind you...
    - 9y ago
teej 9y ago
> If this is true, the Python Software Foundation should be ashamed. With Zed can come... drama. At least that's the way it used to be. I would take what he says with a grain of salt.
- Twirrim 9y ago
  Nothing ever changes. Every time I see his name appear, there's yet some more absurd drama involved.
JoshTriplett 9y ago
The author is sufficiently obnoxious and abrasive at numerous people that I wouldn't be at all surprised at developers attempting to steer prospective future community members elsewhere, though for far more appropriate reasons.
- lomnakkus 9y ago
  I saw a presentation by him a few years ago[1] and I think the best characterization I could come up with is "Nobel Disease". He doesn't literally have a Nobel, but I think his early success has gone to his head and he seems to imagine himself an expert[2] on things that he is manifestly not. [1] On a subject that I could reasonably be called an expert on. No, I will not elaborate for reasons of pseudonymity. Take that for what it's worth. [2] As if we even had objective criteria for judging language design at this point in time.
hobofan 9y ago
"Saying that Python 3 sucks" is putting it a bit lightly. He openly advocates against using Python 3 [0](related article [1]), which is obviously something the PSF doesn't like to see. To be honest, I am a bit surprised that he adapted the book to Python 3 if he is so strongly against it. [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20161123042252/https://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/nopython3.html https://web.archive.org/web/20161123042252/https://learnpyth... [1]: https://eev.ee/blog/2016/11/23/a-rebuttal-for-python-3/ https://eev.ee/blog/2016/11/23/a-rebuttal-for-python-3/
- thehardsphere 9y ago
  Well, first he said he wasn't going to, then he got flamed by basically everyone on the Internet over it, then after that publicity died down he changed his mind and revised it. A cynic would think that his criticism was an elaborate marketing ploy to drive up sales of the eventual Python 3 edition of the book which he had planned all along...
ubernostrum 9y ago
Then I recently found out that members of the Python Software Foundation (PSF) have been actively trying Something worth knowing about the PSF is that there are multiple groups to which this term might (correctly or incorrectly) be applied by someone who wasn't familiar with its workings. Most importantly, literally anyone on earth can become a "member" (in the technical bylaws-of-the-foundation sense) for free by filling out an online form. The question here is whether someone who is legally authorized to represent and act on behalf of the PSF did something in their capacity as a representative/official of the PSF. Which really is something only the Board of Directors, or someone they designate, can do. The records of the Board's meetings and actions are public: https://www.python.org/psf/records/board/ https://www.python.org/psf/records/board/ So if you want to verify this claim it ought to be easy to find in there. (disclaimer: I am a Fellow of the PSF, which is a sort of permanent voting member, but not board membership. I am on the Board of Directors of the Django Software Foundation, though, so I have some experience with how actions can be misinterpreted or misrepresented...)
esaym 9y ago
No, the author of these books should be ashamed. He was part of the reason it took 10 years for Python 3 adoption to get to where it is today. He wrote very nasty things about python3. I attended pycon a couple of years ago and was still new to python. I had (tried to) read "Learn Python the Hard Way" as well. I attended many of the "newbie to python" tutorials while at the conference and many of them had this book as a suggested read. I promptly informed the tutorial leaders how the latest version instructed people to never install python 3 and spoke ill of it as if ignored, python3 would just go away (note the tutorial classes where all in python 3). Most people seemed shocked by this but they all removed the recommendation for the book. Flame me all you, but I was trying to jump ship from Perl (which (un)fortunately didn't really work as years later I still make most of my money from Perl stacks). And the last thing I wanted to jump from was one language that had a giant rift in the community (perl5/perl6) to a "newer" "better" community that had the same rift in it as well. Thankfully people seemed to come to their senses over the last couple of years and have started to throw out their python 2 code.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >No, the author of these books should be ashamed. He was part of the reason it took 10 years for Python 3 adoption to get to where it is today. He wrote very nasty things about python3. He played an insignificant parts compared to the large incompetence shown by the team that decided Python's 3 feature set and handled the transition. In general, whoever decided that such few features (in the initial versions) and such lacklustre fixes should be enough to make people adopt an incompatible version of the language. They still did it better than the Perl people, so there's that.
  - scrollaway 9y ago
    I don't remember the Python team ever advocating a move to 3.0, or 3.1, or 3.2 for that matter. IIRC those versions were out there so we could start looking at how things will change. It's Python 3.3 where migration started being a serious matter of discussion, and 3.4 added more 2.7 syntax backports to help the transition. And the community did follow on that. 3.3 and 3.4 are where many 2.x libraries added Python 3 compatibility. Calling the Python core devs incompetent for something where instances of prior art can be counted on the digits of one hand that may have lost a few fingers is a bit rich.

jachee 9y ago

Re: PSF: Agreed. The good news is that the author will be compensated for this work. Sadly it makes me, personally, regret my time investment and trust in python.

yladiz 9y ago
I'm curious what proof the author has about this. Is there actual proof that the PSF is trying to undermine his work?
robertlagrant 9y ago
@jachee there were many issues with LPTHW, despite its cool branding. Here's a list compiled by some who had to repeatedly walk people who used it through the many problems it introduced to their learning process: https://sopython.com/wiki/LPTHW_Complaints https://sopython.com/wiki/LPTHW_Complaints I hope you carry on with Python!

thehardsphere 9y ago

I think it's less than he said that Python 3 sucks, and more that he had a completely incorrect and misleading explanation of how Python 3 is not Turing complete and thus nobody should use it over Python 2. Then when he was hit the Internet backdraft, he pretended that it was an elaborate joke instead of evidence of his massive incompetence.

PhasmaFelis 9y ago
Is it even possible for any non-trivial programming language to not be Turing-complete?
- thehardsphere 9y ago
  I think the answer is "No", but it depends on where you draw the line at "trivial" and "programming language." I think ANSI SQL isn't Turing complete. But I don't consider that a programming language. I think all modern general purpose programming languages are Turing complete. That is, programs from general purpose programming languages can be re-written in any other Turing complete language. Not to be confused with the Zed Shaw "joke" that a programming language is not Turing complete if its interpreter does not run source code written in another Turing complete language, completely unmodified.

scrollaway 9y ago

> If this is true, the Python Software Foundation should be ashamed. It's true and seriously misleading. He's edited it a lot since (and even toned down its title), but the blog post he wrote against Python 3 was a FUD-filled incoherent piece. You can absolutely expect members of the Python community to be disappointed. A lot of those members are people who learned from Shaw and to see him write a piece like that is heartbreaking. The people on /r/Python who called for the removal of links to his resources (because yeah, it's not the PSF actively seeking out websites, it's the websites' members wanting him gone), those people were not "out for vengeance", they were not willing to link to material which actively campaigned against where the community was moving to. He may be trying to position himself as one, but Zed Shaw was not a voice of reason who would point out the Python 3 flaws which nobody else dared criticize. Plenty of others criticized Python 3. Zed was actually trying to harm the move to it. Congrats on the book, and I'm glad he changed his mind, but I have no sympathy to his complaints there. PS: This is what happened to processing durations when I upgraded our Hearthstone log parsing pipeline from Python 2.7 to Python 3.6 after Amazon finally made the latter available on AWS Lambda: https://twitter.com/Adys/status/878985322436206592 https://twitter.com/Adys/status/878985322436206592

kartD 9y ago
Your last point is slightly misleading, you're comparing Python 3.6 (2016ish) with Python 2.7(2008), it better be faster
- scrollaway 9y ago
  I just meant to include that as a real world example of the effects of upgrading from 2 to 3. But the blog post in question does date back to 2016 so I don't know how that's unfair :)
- orf 9y ago
  It's actually comparing 2.7.12 (2016) with 3.6 (2016). Not that the release date has much to do with the benchmark, mind you...
  - 9y ago

teej 9y ago

> If this is true, the Python Software Foundation should be ashamed. With Zed can come... drama. At least that's the way it used to be. I would take what he says with a grain of salt.

Twirrim 9y ago
Nothing ever changes. Every time I see his name appear, there's yet some more absurd drama involved.

JoshTriplett 9y ago

The author is sufficiently obnoxious and abrasive at numerous people that I wouldn't be at all surprised at developers attempting to steer prospective future community members elsewhere, though for far more appropriate reasons.

lomnakkus 9y ago
I saw a presentation by him a few years ago[1] and I think the best characterization I could come up with is "Nobel Disease". He doesn't literally have a Nobel, but I think his early success has gone to his head and he seems to imagine himself an expert[2] on things that he is manifestly not. [1] On a subject that I could reasonably be called an expert on. No, I will not elaborate for reasons of pseudonymity. Take that for what it's worth. [2] As if we even had objective criteria for judging language design at this point in time.

hobofan 9y ago

"Saying that Python 3 sucks" is putting it a bit lightly. He openly advocates against using Python 3 [0](related article [1]), which is obviously something the PSF doesn't like to see. To be honest, I am a bit surprised that he adapted the book to Python 3 if he is so strongly against it. [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20161123042252/https://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/nopython3.html https://web.archive.org/web/20161123042252/https://learnpyth... [1]: https://eev.ee/blog/2016/11/23/a-rebuttal-for-python-3/ https://eev.ee/blog/2016/11/23/a-rebuttal-for-python-3/

thehardsphere 9y ago
Well, first he said he wasn't going to, then he got flamed by basically everyone on the Internet over it, then after that publicity died down he changed his mind and revised it. A cynic would think that his criticism was an elaborate marketing ploy to drive up sales of the eventual Python 3 edition of the book which he had planned all along...

ubernostrum 9y ago

Then I recently found out that members of the Python Software Foundation (PSF) have been actively trying Something worth knowing about the PSF is that there are multiple groups to which this term might (correctly or incorrectly) be applied by someone who wasn't familiar with its workings. Most importantly, literally anyone on earth can become a "member" (in the technical bylaws-of-the-foundation sense) for free by filling out an online form. The question here is whether someone who is legally authorized to represent and act on behalf of the PSF did something in their capacity as a representative/official of the PSF. Which really is something only the Board of Directors, or someone they designate, can do. The records of the Board's meetings and actions are public: https://www.python.org/psf/records/board/ https://www.python.org/psf/records/board/ So if you want to verify this claim it ought to be easy to find in there. (disclaimer: I am a Fellow of the PSF, which is a sort of permanent voting member, but not board membership. I am on the Board of Directors of the Django Software Foundation, though, so I have some experience with how actions can be misinterpreted or misrepresented...)

esaym 9y ago

No, the author of these books should be ashamed. He was part of the reason it took 10 years for Python 3 adoption to get to where it is today. He wrote very nasty things about python3. I attended pycon a couple of years ago and was still new to python. I had (tried to) read "Learn Python the Hard Way" as well. I attended many of the "newbie to python" tutorials while at the conference and many of them had this book as a suggested read. I promptly informed the tutorial leaders how the latest version instructed people to never install python 3 and spoke ill of it as if ignored, python3 would just go away (note the tutorial classes where all in python 3). Most people seemed shocked by this but they all removed the recommendation for the book. Flame me all you, but I was trying to jump ship from Perl (which (un)fortunately didn't really work as years later I still make most of my money from Perl stacks). And the last thing I wanted to jump from was one language that had a giant rift in the community (perl5/perl6) to a "newer" "better" community that had the same rift in it as well. Thankfully people seemed to come to their senses over the last couple of years and have started to throw out their python 2 code.

coldtea 9y ago
>No, the author of these books should be ashamed. He was part of the reason it took 10 years for Python 3 adoption to get to where it is today. He wrote very nasty things about python3. He played an insignificant parts compared to the large incompetence shown by the team that decided Python's 3 feature set and handled the transition. In general, whoever decided that such few features (in the initial versions) and such lacklustre fixes should be enough to make people adopt an incompatible version of the language. They still did it better than the Perl people, so there's that.
- scrollaway 9y ago
  I don't remember the Python team ever advocating a move to 3.0, or 3.1, or 3.2 for that matter. IIRC those versions were out there so we could start looking at how things will change. It's Python 3.3 where migration started being a serious matter of discussion, and 3.4 added more 2.7 syntax backports to help the transition. And the community did follow on that. 3.3 and 3.4 are where many 2.x libraries added Python 3 compatibility. Calling the Python core devs incompetent for something where instances of prior art can be counted on the digits of one hand that may have lost a few fingers is a bit rich.