Learning Python, 2nd Edition

Chapter 29. Python Resources

Programming languages, like natural languages, grow tight-knit communities— speakers of the same language have a natural affinity for each other. Programming languages, being the result of individual choice rather than accident of birth, lead to stronger feelings of kinship than might seem reasonable for what some see as a purely technological topic. Open source languages, which are never chosen because of a marketing campaign, but instead after a process of deliberation and comparison, seem to elicit even more enthusiasm (some would even say fanaticism) from their users. This chapter is about the community that defines itself as being “The Python Community,” from the inner sanctum of people who dream about Python daily to the occasional Python user.

Because writing shareable Python code is so easy, much of this community shares their enthusiasm and their work, quite often in the form of yet more free software. The resulting snowball effect (or, to use a more trendy term, the “network effect”) makes writing even large programs a snap compared to many other language choices. This chapter will point out some of the most valuable third-party offerings, from small modules to interfaces to operating system libraries to module repositories.

Layers of Community

In this section, we will discuss the various layers of the community, from the core of very serious programmers who implement the official Python interpreter, out through the Python Software Foundation, ...