On Sun, Oct 25, 2009 at 9:07 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen@xemacs.org> wrote:
Guido van Rossum writes:
> The proposed moratorium is a *conscious decision*, an intentional > policy meant to have a certain effect. This is just the opposite of > evolution in nature (unless you believe in "intelligent design" :-).
By Clarke's Law, I see no way to distinguish between the presence and the absence of intelligent design in nature.
So using Occam's razor we might as well assume there is none.
> While I mentioned 3.x in my original message about the moratorium, I > didn't mean to imply that the moratorium would solve the slow uptake > directly. The intent was to give people who would otherwise work on > language change proposals more time and motivation to work on porting > 3rd party packages to Py3k.
Time, yes, but I'm not sure I see where the motivation comes from. Do you mean something like:
remove all hope from "design + maybe implementation" proposals, with the intent of encouraging "design + implementation + clear application to use case" proposals.
where porting to Py3k should be a prolific source of use cases? ISTM that has been the desired historical criterion for inclusion in Python anyway. So a moratorium might reduce the number of "frivolous" proposals, but is it really going to encourage work on porting? (Those are all really yes/no questions from my standpoint.)
But hard to answer. Have faith. :-)
If not, Steven d'Aprano's line that Python has been quite stable anyway, up to Python 3, and so (IIU him C) there's really no need for a formal moratorium, becomes very plausible.
We're seeing an influx of new developers. They don't all remember or understand why we had to limit releases to once per 18+ months. The moratorium reminds them and their fans of the importance of *not* adding new features.
That is, since there doesn't seem to be a strong call for a moratorium from the Jython / Cython / IronPython / PyPy end. (So far, that it. I don't suppose the final word has been spoken by those developers, yet.)
> PS. My elbow needs a couple more weeks of rest. Limiting myself to > ultra-short emails.
May the Intelligent Designer have mercy on your elbow!<wink>
I trust my doctor a little more. -- --Guido van Rossum PS. My elbow needs a couple more weeks of rest. Limiting myself to ultra-short emails.