Forum Archive

I'm relatively new to Pythonista and, for that matter, to Python. I find Pythonista a great tool in its own right as well as a brilliant aid to my learning.

I've also bought Editorial.

Are these apps built and maintained by omz alone? Incredible work if so.

What arrangements are in place if omz becomes, er, indisposed?

I've put huge effort into a lot of things and been disappointed when the sole developer has lost interest or things in their life have taken them away indefinitely.

@gruntfutuk, if you look through the posts in this forum you will see years of commitment from @omz for both Pythonista and Editorial. To the best of my knowledge, he is an indie programmer. So that has a lot of advantages and some disadvantages. Eg. If he get hits by a bus tomorrow. But so many projects have the same weaknesses, even big teams. The visionary/leader disappears, often so does the vision and or the project. But I think the main point is Pythonista is not a flash in the pan. It's been going on for some years with a very impressive record for keeping current, new features and interaction from @omz at all levels.
It's just my observation, but I am sure most we agree.

@Phuket2 I sincerely hope there is no bus in the town where @omz lives 😂

@cvp , lol. Yeah, was a blunt example. But back when i was working as the lead dev and dev manager, i was insured for a lot of money. Also, all the key guys in the company could not fly together. Commercial airlines I mean. Sounds silly, but was true. I am sure corporations still do similar things today with key people.

@Phuket2 "Bus factor" is the actual term for the number of unreplaceable people in a project. Interestingly, that Wikipedia article's History section gives an early example where "Michael McLay publicly asked, in 1994, what would happen to the Python language if Guido van Rossum were hit by a bus". Seems to be a common thought in the Python community.

Even if omz would be completely unable to work on Pythonista anymore for some reason, I'd assume that the source code would somehow be passed on to someone else, or made public if all else fails. Some parts of Pythonista are actually open-source already: omz has contracted someone to help with porting Pythonista to Python 3, and the patches to make Python 3 work on iOS are publicly available in the linked issue and at pybee/Python-Apple-support.

To be clear, I'm aware that this discussion is somewhat macabre. @omz, I genuinely hope that nothing bad happens to you.

Yeah.... i didn't like writing my post. I think i rewrote 3 times before hitting submit. Not nice to talk about another persons mortality. But @dgelessus I think you shed some light on the original post.

Thanks to everyone who responded. Obviously not a nice topic, and I of course wish only the best for @omz.

I have got into Pythonista rather heavily almost instantly. It is a wonderful application, and shows how amazing individual developers can be. I’ve also found Editorial to be great for just cracking on writing things without distraction.

Given the dependency on one person, I don’t feel I can recommend it generally for my clients, sadly, just in case. Even were the author to make arrangements for the code to be released should he become unavailable, I doubt the obvious quality and cohesion demonstrated in the product would be sustained by other developers if they had not already been brought inside to support maintenance and development.

I do hope both omz and Pythonista have a long and happy life.

No doubt there is a beta available somewhere which supports the latest version of Python. I look forward to seeing that in due course.