NIST Python Workshop - Software Management Session Report

ken.manheimer@nist.gov, 301 975-3539

Original 20-Nov-1994, last mod 24-Nov-1994.

GvR/Python World Tour, '94

Intro

As suggested in my prospectus for this session, we concentrated on certain immediate coding issues that involve intrinsic python features, as opposed to add-on layers or extensions. The idea is to address intrinsic issues now, before the features (or lack thereof) are more ensconced, and therefore more difficult to change, down the road.

Starting with my list of prospective topics, the group concentrated on identifying suitable topics, and came up with the following:

Of these items, we took on:
  • program modularity,
  • instrinsic docs, and
  • module customization.

    We also paid some brief attention to:

  • module versioning and
  • pseudo-code variable names.

    (We saw the remaining items either as being implementable more suitably as language extrinsics, or else, as programmer interfaces, sufficiently large and amorphous enough to best be considered another time.)

    As a preview, the code in custom.py exhibits many of the prospective features discussed in the meeting.

    Conclusion

    The python software management session was lively and productive. I know that i pushed my agenda through, but i tried to do so in a way that took redirection and suggestions from others. We did incorporate some items not on my agenda, and my preexisting proposals were changed (and, i think, were improved) by the interchange. I think that the resulting proposals substantively reflect the attention and input from all involved, resulting in better schemes than would have come out of any isolated efforts.

    I hope that the resulting proposals offer significant advances on the respective python features, and are suitable for inclusion in the language. Further comments and suggestions are emphatically welcomed - in particular, note the uncertain items bracketed by doubled '??' question marks. Please feel free to send email directly to me, and/or the python lists. 

    Ken Manheimer	      					301 975-3539
ken.manheimer@nist.gov				   FAX: 301 963-9137

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