> Donning my devil's advocate suite, here are some recent observations:
>
> - Important decisions are made on internal PythonLabs meetings
> (unit testing, the scope issue, etc), not by an organized python-
> dev process. Does anyone care about -1 and +1's anymore?
Python-dev is as organized as its participants want it to be. It
appeared that very few people (apart from you) were interested in unit
testing, so we looked elsewhere. We found that others inside Digital
Creations had lots of experience with PyUnit and really liked it.
Without arguments, +1 and -1's indeed don't have that much weight.
With the right argument, a single +1 or -1 can be sufficient. Python
is (still) not a democracy.
> - The PEP process isn't working ("I updated the PEP and checked
> in the code", "but *that* PEP doesn't apply to *me*", etc).
I wouldn't say it isn't working. I believe it's very helpful to have
a working document checked in somewhere to augment the discussion, and
the PEPs make progress possible where in the past we went around in
circles in the list without ever coming to a conclusion. Forcing the
proposer of a new feature to write a PEP is a good way to think
through more of the consequences of a new idea. Referring to a PEP
when arguments are repeated can cut short discussion. Note that the
PEP work flow document (PEP 1) explicitly states that the BDFL has the
final word. But of course sometimes the realities of software
development catch up with us -- we can't possibly hope to do all
design ahead of all implementation, and during testing we may discover
important new facts that must affect the design.
> - Impressive hacks are more important than concerns from people
> who make their living selling Python technology (rather than a
> specific application). Codewise, nested scopes are amazing.
> From a marketing perspective, it's a disaster.
Aha, now we're talking. Python is growing up, and more and more
people are making money by supporting it. Obviously, businesspeople
have to be more conservative than software developers. But do you
*really* think that breaking the occasional exec-without-in-clause or
from-import-* will affect a large enough portion of the user
population to make a difference? People with a lot at stake tend to
be slow in upgrading anyway. So we're releasing 2.1 mostly for the
bleeding edge consumers -- e.g. Paul Barret recently announced that
his institute is upgrading to 2.0 and doesn't plan to switch to 2.1
any time soon. That's fine with me.
Hey, here's an idea. We could add the warning API to 2.0.1 (it's
backwards compatible AFAIK), and you can release PY201 with warnings
added for things that your customers will need to change before they
switch to PY21.
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
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