"PP" == Paul Prescod <paulp@ActiveState.com> writes:
PP> Jeremy Hylton wrote:
I don't recall seeing any substanital discussion of this PEP on python-dev or python-list, nor do I recall a BDFL decision on the PEP. There has been lots of discussion about backwards compatibility, but not much consensus.
PP> We can have the discussion now, then. In my opinion it is PP> irresponsible to knowingly unleash backwards incompatibilities PP> on the world with no warning. If people think Python is unstable PP> it will negatively impact its growth much more than the delay of PP> some esoteric features. You have a colorful way of writing :-). When we unleashed Python 2.1a1, there was a fair amount of discussion about nested scopes on python-dev and on python-list. The fact that code would break has been documented in the PEP since December, before the BDFL pronounced on it. Why didn't you say it was irresponsible then? <0.5 wink> If you're just repeating your earlier arguments, I apologize for the rhetoric :-). PP> Let me put the ball back in your court: PP> Is the benefit provided by having nested scopes this year rather PP> than next year worth the pain of howls of outrage in PP> Python-land. If we give people a year to upgrade (with warning PP> messages) they will (rightly) grumble but not scream. I've heard plenty of hypothetical howls and one real one, from Mark. The alpha testing hasn't resulted in a lot of other complaints. I just asked on c.l.py for problem reports and /F followed up with a script to help find problems. Let's see what the result is. I ran Fredrik's script over 4700 source files on my machine and found exactly four errors. Two were from old copies of the Python CVS tree; they've been fixed in the current tree. One was from Zope and another was an *old* jpython test case. Jeremy