[Baypiggies] Python and progress

[Aahz]

On Sun, Apr 09, 2006, Marilyn Davis wrote:
> On Sat, 8 Apr 2006, Aahz wrote:
>> On Sat, Apr 08, 2006, Marilyn Davis wrote:
>>>
>>> From my point of view, the thing about Python that is revolutionary
>>> and profoundly correct is that backward-compatibility is a
>>> second-class priority.  
>> 
>> Huh.  There are many many people who would disagree with that assertion,
>> including me.  Backwards compatibility is so important that the dev
>> community often resists changes -- and the big point of the Py3K effort
>> is to provide an opportunity to break backward compability.  Python
>> makes it simple and straightforward to write a script that will work with
>> both 1.5.2 and 2.5.  Moreover, Python makes it easy to connect to legacy
>> libraries written in C and other languages.
> 
> Oh yes, backward compatibility is very important but:
> 
> from __future__ import division
> 
> is the thing that makes me think that the top priority is the human
> experience: programmer, teacher, student. 

Yes, but you have to explicitly request that breakage in 2.x; it will
only become the default in 3.0 when breaking backward compatibility is
allowed.  Not only that, in 2.x you have to break backward compatibility
one module at a time.

Python has always added new features that aren't available in earlier
releases; the point is that there is little gratuitous change that
prevents scripts written for older releases from running.
-- 
Aahz (aahz at pythoncraft.com)           <*>         http://www.pythoncraft.com/

"Look, it's your affair if you want to play with five people, but don't
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