One of the things I picked up from the Perl conference is that Perl users *seem* (to me) to have a higher tolerance for code breakage than Python users. (and Python users have a higher tolerance than (let's say) Java users) Even if we put aside Perl 6, Perlers talk pretty glibly about ripping little used features out in Perl 5.8.0 and Perl 5.10 and so forth. e.g. Damian said that Autoload is going away (or pseudo hashes or something like that). Whether or not he was right, nobody in the room threw tomatoes as I'm sure they would if Guido tried to kill __getattr__. Admittedly, I never know when I hear stuff like "tr///CU is dead" or "package; is dead" whether each was a feature that has been in for three years or was added to an experimental release and removed from the next experimental release. I'm not criticizing the Perl community. Acceptance of change is a good thing! But I think they should know how conservative the Python world is. Last week there were storm troopers heading for Guidos house when he announced that the division operator is going to change its behaviour two or three years. That means it would take a major PR effort to convince the Python community that even minor language changes would be worth the benefit of sharing a VM. -- Take a recipe. Leave a recipe. Python Cookbook! http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook