Ian Bicking’s wrote a list of python wishes. There’s stuff I agree with, some with which I don’t and stuff I simply don’t understand. But what caught my eye was:

Things I wouldn’t do:
Put up with any significant-whitespace whining. Here 99% of the Python community is with me. I think there is a meme that Python people are close-minded to suggestions for changes in the language. I think there is significant truth to that. But sometimes everyone else is just completely wrong. I want nothing to do with any programmer who would mis-indent their code. If you want to mis-indent your code you are an idiot. If you want idiotic code to be an option you are being absurd.

Precisely. Yesterday was our regular web talk evening , which is often followed by a lively debate. As usual we covered all sorts of topics, one of which was Python. To paraphrase a part of it:

A: I don’t like Python because of significant whitespace.
B: Do you indent your code?
A: Yes, of course.
B: And the problem is?

I can’t understand how this complaint doesn’t die. I can understand that some other language can tickle their fancy. People have different tastes and if some people like it rough, who am I to judge. But why in the world would you wish for a feature you’d never be stupid enough to use?

What are possible reasons for a class of products to go the way of the Dodo ?

I can think of two. The one I usually hear about is development of a new class of products that make old ones redundant. Popular examples being ice or whip making industries. I don’t need ice and when I do, my fridge is there for me and I rarely feel the urge to whip our car.

The other one I can think of is a change of behavior as a consequence of a different price point. Burda used to be popular, but I can’t think of anyone who’d still buy it. Price of clothes and shoes have become so low that most people prefer buying a replacement than repairing the old one.

I have flatfeet and highly value comfortable footwear. Disappearing shoemakers are a real problem for me so if anyone can recommend one in Ljubljana or Maribor, it would be greatly appreciated.

Besides that, can anybody think of other reasons for product class extinctions?

I caught an interesting observation on O’Reilly’s Radar. In my opinion there are two problems that web users should pay attention to. One, as noted on Radar, is privacy and the other is reliability of your service provider.

There are limits to what we can do about either of them as a company. We built Marela on a fault-tolerant system using solid hardware and think user’s data is reasonably safe from data loss and intrusions. Like others we can’t rule it out completely, but I think it was worth it to build a safer system than our competition even if users often don’t care (until it’s too late).

We also don’t collect any personal data we don’t actually need and don’t store what we do collect a minute longer than absolutely necessary. However, there’s little we can do about our legal obligations. Even though legislation in Slovenia is not quite the same as the one cited in the article, it’s still true that it’s easier for law-enforcement institutions to legally access your data (unknown to you) if it’s not residing on your personal computer. We are eating our own dog food, so this doesn’t make us happy either.

I still think it’s dumb to have all your data stored only on your personal computer, especially since vast majority of computer users seldom if ever make backups. Encryption can go a long way in protecting data from prying eyes, but what I wish most is simply for people to be more aware.

Without awareness there’s little hope for improving the legislation and practices of our industry.