Developing that skill and awareness in people who don’t have it requires learning to take place.

Learning, in turn, requires motivation–of which there were classically two types: the carrot and the stick, opportunity and fear. Dan Pink’s book, Drive, explains why this old view of motivation is wrong. Watch this animated video for an entertaining presentation of his point:

http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/videos/

Pink points to our ability to “grow and develop” as the real motivators. Contributing to Python would be easier for more people if it was on a pathway–ideally a well-lit, well-paved pathway with a friendly greeter right at the start–to growing and developing into a better, more successful/skilled person.

Now I just learned today that BackRub, the precursor to the Google search engine, used Python:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google

More people should know that fact. Python can lead to great things!

I’m trying to use Python in a similar way to give people new capabilities to learn from what others know or have discovered–and I’d like your help.

Learning, for most people, involves a combination of having things explained and acting on the new information. A “contributing to Python sandbox” might be useful in this regard. Give people a safe place to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes painlessly.

But I’m hoping to spark the development of something more ambitious: a new style of Skype-like interaction with the computer that would give Python the ability to “explain itself.” We can put on a headset and connect a webcam to communicate with one another through the computer, so why not use that same hardware to interact directly with the computer — instead of (or in addition to) the mouse and keyboard? Give the computer a script (that it can fetch from the web) and let it use text-to-speech to talk, voice recognition to listen and the webcam to watch for and respond to gestures. What you get is an interactive tutor.

The open source project for this style of interface is called Open Allure DS ( http://openallureds.org or search for Open Allure on PyPI ) and it has a series of short proof-of-concept videos at

http://bit.ly/openallure

including the classic Python No Hands.

You will find prototype Python code at Open Allure from a Python novice with documentation but no tests at this point (I wrote my first Python program less than 6 months ago), but amazingly the current version works well enough on Mac, Windows and Linux to demonstrate the idea. I’m committed to full-time development work on the project for at least the next 12 months–so if you don’t look at it now, please look later.

Bottom line, what I am suggesting is this:
0/ people need help learning the skills and attitudes required to contribute to Python
1/ build this new interface so the computer can verbally guide people through learning new things
2/ create content for the interface which explains all about Python (including how to contribute to it and why that is a good thing to do) and then
3/ watch as the magic of self-reference works as it did with the viral spread of “Show Source” HTML and the web

A system that has the ability to self-explain can effectively reproduce and “grow and develop.” If Dan Pink is right, such growth and development is not only what we want for Python, but what we are most motivated to seek for ourselves.

http://pycon.blip.tv/file/1947394/

(Finding 5 issues to help with may be quite non-trivial for an inexperienced contributor and many won’t even try).

Also, it might help to describe the “5 for 1″ offer in a bit more detail: what qualifies as a review? Is applying someone else patch and testing it sufficient? Is pointing out a bug dup or pointing out a bug side effect sufficient? The problem for me with “5 for 1″ is that even though I commented on a few issue (and in some cases my comments seem to have led to the resolution), I don’t view my comments as reviews and I don’t want to sound like a cheapskate by making a “5 for 1″ request.. So clarifying the rules of the game might help.

Right now I’m waiting for two of my patches to pdb to get finally accepted/rejected (I already went through 3 rounds of reviews, added test cases, etc)…

http://bugs.python.org/issue7245 and
http://bugs.python.org/issue6719

And, yes, there are a couple of other pdb bugs which I could fix, but probably won’t bother until my current patches make it.

I know this is an unpopular opinion in the open source world, but this is the way I believe in.

My approach is to devote a lot of effort to a very small number of projects, in contrast to devoting a little effort to a big number of projects.

I think that this approach is superior, especially in the world of software where having one excellent project is better than having 3 good projects. (Generally speaking.)

But of course, this approach might not suit everybody.