[Python-ideas] Proposal: Moratorium on Python language changes

[geremy condra]

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 9:07 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 5:57 PM, geremy condra <debatem1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 8:31 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>>> On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 5:15 PM, Jared Grubb <jared.grubb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> It would be a shame to discourage new ideas just because we are not willing
>>>> to implement them "now".
>>>>
>>>> I hope that any moratorium would not cut discussions of new ideas short,
>>>> would not change the tone of python-ideas, and would not discourage writing
>>>> PEP's for new language features (with the understanding that it will be a
>>>> while before they actually get implemented).
>>>
>>> Actually one of my goals with the moratorium is to discourage
>>> discussion of certain ideas that keep coming up forever and draining
>>> the energy of the list.
>>
>> Personally, I think mandating that you bring working code to the table
>> when proposing a language change would take the number of requests
>> for, say, removing the GIL to pretty much nil.
>
> Actually removing the GIL is not subject to the moratorium, and it
> seems that some people *are* working on code.
>

Alright then, adding default arguments that evaluate when the
function is called.

>>> Also, I certainly don't hope that when the
>>> moratorium is lifted there are 20 language PEPs waiting for approval.
>>> Python's evolution needs to slow down as the user community grows.
>>
>> Again, I doubt that very many of the people proposing some of these
>> changes have either the technical skills to pull them off or the
>> patience to maintain them for a year and a half while waiting for the
>> moratorium to lift. My guess is that you'll have about 300 half-baked
>> or just-started projects and only one or two good ones ready for PEP
>> consideration. Over the period of time you're talking about, that
>> doesn't seem -IMO- to be too much, too fast. Your mileage may
>> certainly vary.
>
> I hope to discourage those 300 people to the point where there won't
> be any half-baked or unbaked projects. Let them contribute to Perl 6.
> :-)

The trick is figuring out in advance which is the 300 and which is the
1 or 2. My suggestion is that we allow them to effectively self-select;
that we allow those who are skilled enough and patient enough- and
who happen to have ideas of unusual merit- to prove that to the
Python community. If the results are great, great! Two years down the
line Python has a great new feature. If not, oh well- it's not like you
are under any obligation to merge it. And there's probably merit in
keeping the really wretched ones around too, if only to say "no way,
tried it, had to kill it with fire". Either way, Python wins.

Geremy Condra