Lazy Writers
Earlier today I was reading the article 15 Ways Python Is a Powerful Force on the Web at insidetech.monster.com and discovered that Python was not named after the snake but rather after the British comedy troupe:
An important goal of the Python developers is making Python fun to use. This is reflected in the origin of the name-based on the British television series “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and the “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” movie. There is a common practice of using Monty Python references in sample code, and in the sometimes playful approach to tutorials and reference materials. For example, the metasyntactic variables often used in Python literature are spam and eggs, instead of the traditional foo and bar.
"That's cool", I thought and I decided to do some research on Python to confirm that statement and learn more about the relationship between the programming language and my favorite band of English comedians. I was a little annoyed when I found this in Wikipedia:
An important goal of the Python developers is making Python fun to use. This is reflected in the origin of the name (based on the television series Monty Python's Flying Circus), in the common practice of using Monty Python references in example code, and in an occasionally playful approach to tutorials and reference materials.[22][23] For example, the metasyntactic variables often used in Python literature are spam and eggs, instead of the traditional foo and bar.
Except for inserting a reference to the Holy Grail movie, the InsideTech quote is word-for-word the same text as that found in Wikipedia. "What the hell?" was my first reaction. Getting the information from Wikipedia for the article is fine but the writer was too lazy to at least reformat the sentence in his own words.
The optimist in me was hoping that the writer of the InsideTech article also contributed to the Python article in Wikipedia. However, the pessimist in me is telling me that I'm being very naive.
An important goal of the Python developers is making Python fun to use. This is reflected in the origin of the name-based on the British television series “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and the “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” movie. There is a common practice of using Monty Python references in sample code, and in the sometimes playful approach to tutorials and reference materials. For example, the metasyntactic variables often used in Python literature are spam and eggs, instead of the traditional foo and bar.
"That's cool", I thought and I decided to do some research on Python to confirm that statement and learn more about the relationship between the programming language and my favorite band of English comedians. I was a little annoyed when I found this in Wikipedia:
An important goal of the Python developers is making Python fun to use. This is reflected in the origin of the name (based on the television series Monty Python's Flying Circus), in the common practice of using Monty Python references in example code, and in an occasionally playful approach to tutorials and reference materials.[22][23] For example, the metasyntactic variables often used in Python literature are spam and eggs, instead of the traditional foo and bar.
Except for inserting a reference to the Holy Grail movie, the InsideTech quote is word-for-word the same text as that found in Wikipedia. "What the hell?" was my first reaction. Getting the information from Wikipedia for the article is fine but the writer was too lazy to at least reformat the sentence in his own words.
The optimist in me was hoping that the writer of the InsideTech article also contributed to the Python article in Wikipedia. However, the pessimist in me is telling me that I'm being very naive.