On Wed, 2008-09-10 at 18:30 -0700, Josiah Carlson wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 6:14 PM, Cliff Wells <cliff@develix.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, 2008-09-10 at 17:16 -0600, Adam Olsen wrote:
> [snip]
> >> They're the use-case you need to justify
> >> against the substantial changes you propose.
> >
> > I guess I don't see it as substantial to people who don't wish to use it
> > (although it's quite substantial to people who do).  Overall, I think
> > this is why I feel the change doesn't require a huge amount of
> > justification: you aren't *forced* to use it, but if you need it, it's
> > huge.  It doesn't impose any significant stylistic change on people who
> > prefer the imperative style, but it opens vast doors for people wishing
> > to approach problems from a functional path.
>
> Once language syntax is added to, changed, etc., it's very difficult
> to remove those additions, changes, etc., even when the feature is
> rarely used, ugly, and generally a bad idea (see back-quotes `x` for
> repr(x) ).  This may not seem like a big deal to you, because you want
> this feature, but for the rest of us who have little (arguably no) use
> for the feature, adding semantics to syntax, or adding syntax =
> additional mental overhead;

Again I assert the opposite: that Python is currently forced to explain
the arbitrary distinction that currently exists and that a significant
amount of extra syntax and language features exist to work around that
distinction.  People may not clamor for the change but there's quite a
few newcomers to Python who must have the distinction explained to them.