On 05:51 pm, pje at telecommunity.com wrote: >At 07:45 AM 3/15/2007 +0100, Martin v. Löwis wrote: >>I apparently took the same position that you now take back then, >>whereas I'm now leaning towards (or going beyond) the position >>Tim had back then, who wrote "BTW, if it *weren't* for the code >>breakage, >>I'd be in favor of doing this." > >If it weren't for the code breakage, I'd be in favor too. That's not >the >point. > >The point is that how can Python be stable as a language if precedents >can >be reversed without a migration plan, just because somebody changes >their >mind? In another five years, will you change your mind again, and >decide >to put this back the way it was? Hear, hear. Python is _not_ stable as a language. I have Java programs that I wrote almost ten years ago which still run perfectly on the latest runtime. There is python software I wrote two years ago which doesn't work right on 2.5, and some of the Python stuff contemporary with that Java code won't even import. >Speaking as a business person, that seems to me... unwise. When I >found >out that this change had been checked in despite all the opposition, my >gut >reaction was, "I guess I can't rely on Python any more", despite 10 >years >of working with it, developing open source software with it, and >contributing to its development. Because from a *business* >perspective, >this sort of flip-flopping means that moving from one "minor" Python >version to another is potentially *very* costly. And indeed it is. Python's advantages in terms of rapidity of development have, thus far, made up the difference for me, but it is threatening to become a close thing. This is a severe problem and something needs to be done about it. >But as you are so fond of pointing out, there is no "many people". >There >are only individual people. That a majority want it one way, means >that >there is a minority who want it another. If next year, it becomes more >popular to have it the other way, will we switch again? If a majority >of >people want braces and required type declarations, will we add them? And, in fact, there is not even a majority. There is a *perception* of a majority. There isn't even a *perception* of a majority of Python users, but a perception of a majority of python-dev readers, who are almost by definition less risk-averse when it comes to language change than anyone else! If we actually care about majorities, let's set up a voting application and allow Python users to vote on each and every feature, and publicize it each time such a debate comes up. Here, I'll get it started: http://jyte.com/cl/python-should-have-a-strict-backward-compatibility- policy-to-guide-its-development According to that highly scientific study, at this point in time, "Nobody disagrees" :). (One in favor, zero against.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/attachments/20070315/c86a6948/attachment.html
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