All they had to do, was say "yes, we'll take the DEI sign down, and reiterate that we accept and support everyone and don't discriminate." Heck they could have made their website background a flaming, dynamic, neon rainbow for all the government cared. A $1.5MM ideological mistake.
> This restriction would apply not only to the security work directly funded by the grant, but to any and all activity of the PSF as a whole. Further, violation of this term gave the NSF the right to “claw back” previously approved and transferred funds. This would create a situation where money we’d already spent could be taken back, which would be an enormous, open-ended financial risk.
This Admin has shown that it's willing to do/say what it wants; there is nothing to stop it from accusing PSF, without having to provide evidence, that it had violated the terms, and then take the money back. It's a risk they were right not to take.
I dug a bit more and see that PSF is so DEI oriented at the core, that it would have affected the way they literally operated: PyLadies, PyCon US diversity work, and active outreaches and other activities/groups for DEI. I also see that DEI is literally part of their foundational mission, and the other happens to be developing Python.
Python underwent one of the most poorly conceived backwards incompatible version updates of any language. I believe that it did irreparable damage to Python's position as an application making or web stack language.
Yet today, it is still one of the most popular languages out there. I believe you can place this popularity at the feet of its outreach programs, which parlaid into being able to find new niches which it is currently thriving in.
From all the surveys I've seen, the demographics of Python users haven't meaningfully changed over time. (And the core dev team is still over 90% male as best I can determine, although there doesn't seem to be an authoritative list.) It's far more plausible that the popularity owes to its viral success as a "glue" language in data analysis and "scientific" applications, which lead to familiarity and adoption for ML applications that are connected to today's AI hype. It also saw a boom during the COVID lockdown; and the choice of Python here can largely be attributed to network effects.
In short, languages like Perl and Ruby didn't have a NumPy equivalent (PDL doesn't appear to be on anything like the same level, and Numo is a newcomer), while languages like R and Julia don't have the same perception as general-purpose (i.e. suitable for integrating numerical computing applications into a wider context).
Python isn't in these niches because of demographic-specific outreach programs, as demonstrated by the demographics of the niches.
Also, the updates were not "poorly conceived", although they were initially released half-baked. If anything, they didn't go nearly far enough.
> It's far more plausible that the popularity owes to its viral success as a "glue" language in data analysis and "scientific" applications
I actually agree with you on this point. It's just that I believe that Python's focus on outreach is why it caught on in those applications in the first place. Without it, I feel like Python would probably occupy the same amount of mindshare of something like Ruby, and those niches it currently occupies would probably have been eaten by JavaScript.
It's certainly not because of any merits of the language itself as being newbie-friendly. I've had enough non-programmer friends and family asking me to explain why whitespace is used for blocks and the difference between using `==` and `is`.....okay I'm going to stop now before I start ranting.
> Also, the updates were not "poorly conceived", although they were initially released half-baked. If anything, they didn't go nearly far enough.
One fun little anecdote I love to throw around is that in the span of time that Python underwent a single seismic update, PHP underwent two, and did a much better job of enticing developers to make those jumps.
The difference is that PHP didn't break the entire universe at once, it just made small, backwards-incompatible changes that you could either shim, or rip through your project and do in-place fixes for. On the other hand, it also gave developers enormous carrots to entice them into upgrading - 5.3 had namespaces which allowed for clean code separation, and 7.0 was *significantly* faster. I hear PHP 8 now has a JIT compiler.
Meanwhile, it took forever for Python to give developers enough tooling to cleanly support Python 2 and 3 in one codebase, and it also lacked enough of a carrot to entice developers to upgrade. Projects like Mercurial thought that the upgrade was a complete waste of time and wish they had switched languages instead. The first Python version I was actually excited about was 3.5 because of type hinting and async/await, and there were still Python 2 holdouts up until the point when 2.7 was finally EOL.
So...."not far enough"....I beg your pardon? I feel like that would've gone even worse, and ended up in a repeat of Perl 6/Raku.
So many things could get flagged as "DEI" under this Admin:
- PyGirls: DEI
- Girls Who Code: DEI
- Free Intro to CS classes in poor neighborhoods: DEI
- Free Coding Camps for low income families: DEI
- Africa Kids Code: DEI
- Coding Classes in Spanish: DEI
etc.
- Not coding, but my kids' chess tournament organizers waive tournament fees for girls and kids from low income families: DEI
If the foundation's core mission is to promote and support Python to as many people as possible, that includes people who would not normally be taking CS classes in schools or have access to resources, then that is DEI.
> If the foundation's core mission is to promote and support Python to as many people as possible, that includes people who would not normally be taking CS classes in schools or have access to resources, then that is DEI.
No, it isn't. DEI, as applied to the PSF, entails promoting and supporting Python to not as many people as possible, by singling out specific groups.
> - PyGirls: DEI
> - Girls Who Code: DEI
I think you mean "PyLadies", but yes, these programs are inherently discriminatory. Their existence also perpetuates the harmful stereotypes that young women would require some sort of special help, or that they benefit from being segregated from young men in the learning environment. (Note that segregating women from men logically necessitates segregating men from women.)
And if you have a daughter, the existence of programs like this sends the message that you should choose her activities according to what society wants for her, not what she wants for herself. That denies agency, and is sexist.
> - Africa Kids Code: DEI
Obviously not.
> AfricaKidsCode was founded by Mangaliso Mokoape in 2018. It is an organization whose primary agenda is to drive digital skills education among young people on the continent through innovation.
I.e., it's meant for people who live in Africa. That isn't a protected characteristic and doesn't exclude, for example, white South Africans. Further, the program doesn't describe itself as having any particular diversity or equity goals.
> - Coding Classes in Spanish: DEI
No, of course not. No critic of DEI makes such arguments, and the Trump administration has not said anything that reasonably supports such a conclusion. Getting there requires conspiratorial thinking. Language is not a "protected characteristic" in US law, and associating it with protected characteristics in order to argue against the Trump administration is psychological projection.
> - Free Intro to CS classes in poor neighborhoods: DEI
> - Free Coding Camps for low income families: DEI
No, and supposing so requires psychological projection.
