On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 2:16 PM, Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> wrote:
On Sun, 25 Jul 2010 10:04:57 am Steve Holden wrote:
- After seeing Raymond's talk about monocle (search for it on PyPI) I am getting excited again about PEP 380 (yield from, return values from generators). Having read the PEP on the plane back home I didn't see anything wrong with it, so it could just be accepted in its current form. Implementation will still have to wait for Python 3.3 because of the moratorium. (Although I wouldn't mind making an exception to get it into 3.2.)
I can understand the temptation, but hope you can manage to resist it.
The downside of allowing such exceptions is that people won't take these pronouncements seriously if they see that a sufficiently desirable goal is a reason for ignoring them. Everyone should be subject to the same rules.
I have no opinion on PEP 380 specifically, but surely a *sufficiently* desirable goal *should* be a reason for breaking the rules? Obedience to some abstract rule just because it is the rule is not a virtue. The moratorium is there to advance Python as a whole, and if (a big "if") it becomes a hindrance instead, then Guido should make an exception.
I promise that I won't cease taking his pronouncements seriously if he does :)
We knew PEP 380 would be hurt by the moratorium when the moratorium PEP went through. The goals of the moratorium itself, in making it possible to have a 3.2 release that is fully supported by all of the major Python implementations, still apply, and I believe making an exception for PEP 380 *would* make those goals much harder to achieve. So, while I can understand Guido's temptation (PEP 380 *is* pretty cool), I'm among those that hope he resists that temptation. Letting these various ideas bake a little longer without syntactic support likely won't hurt either. Cheers, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia