Time for the Python Community to Step Up to the Plate

Open source development advocates talk a lot about the critical role technical communities play in the development of their own technologies, so I won't bother to repeat those ideas here. I do want to point out an important contribution that Python programmers can make right now.

O'Reilly & Associates and ActiveState Corporation are cosponsoring a project called Python Cookbook that is currently being developed publicly and collaboratively at the ActiveState Web site. The Python editor, David Ascher, is a developer at ActiveState, coauthor of O'Reilly & Associates' Learning Python, and a leading light in the Python community. All the contributions are being reviewed and introduced by other Python luminaries, including the creator of Python, Guido van Rossum.

Individuals, members of the Python user community, are contributing the scripts. All the scripts are and will be available for free download from ActiveState's site. (You can now view the first contributions.) O'Reilly will publish the best ones in a book, and some of the proceeds will benefit the Python Software Foundation. ActiveState and O'Reilly will make the scripts and explanations available under the same license that governs Python use.

I call your attention to this project because I really want it to succeed. Sure, in a pragmatic way I'm interested in publishing the book; that's how I put groceries on my table. But I'm more interested in seeing whether a community can join together in this practical way to benefit users of its technology.

Part of the goal of the book is an evangelistic one. Python users extol the virtues of Python to each other, but such discussions are often abstract, discussing the design of the language or its ease of use. Real programmers, though, choose to adopt languages that get their work done quickly and well. These scripts demonstrate the interesting and efficient ways Python can get programming jobs done. This project and the resultant book let each Python programmer contribute a script that shows how Python solves an interesting problem; and visitors to the site are able to browse the contributed scripts by category to see if they can find a good solution to a problem they are having. The better and more plentiful the scripts, the more converts to Python.

I recommend that you go directly to ActiveState's Python Cookbook site after reading this column. At the very least, search the cookbook and see what you think. You may also make comments on and rate the scripts there. If you like what you see and you agree with me about the importance of this project, you should consider adding your favorite Python solution to the mix.

After all, this is an opportunity, but it is also a test. Useful documentation is often the place where good open source technologies founder. Major corporations and powerful interests who reject open source development doubt that a group of unpaid programmers can really collaborate on a project of this sort. Done well, this project will be a demonstration of the strength of the Python community, developed in the open for all to see. As the editor of several Python books and the person who sold O'Reilly on the value of that language, I'd like the site to be a model of the ingenuity and spirit of Python programmers.

Frank Willison