On 21 June 2000, Paul Prescod said:
Is there an argument for putting in features with flaming red neon lights: "warning, experimental, use at your risk." We want to follow a bazaar (if not outright bizarre) development strategy after all. Putting a patch "out there" really doesn't do much about having people really play with and comment on a feature. I would never have experimented (and decided against using...) metaclasses if they hadn't popped up as an experimental feature.
Well, remember there will probably be a "--with-gc" option to the configure script in 1.6. That's a good example of getting an experimental feature out there. However, a "--with-list-comprehensions" option would be a really bad idea; all of a sudden, it's no longer enough to say, "You need Python 1.6" to run this script/use this module, now you need to say, "You need Python 1.6 built with list comprehensions". Ugh. Real language features should not be selectable: either the language is Python 1.6 or it isn't. Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer gward@mems-exchange.org MEMS Exchange / CNRI voice: +1-703-262-5376 Reston, Virginia, USA fax: +1-703-262-5367