[Python-Dev] Making None a keyword

[Guido van Rossum]

> Sorry, this is the syntax department. I think you need to speak to Mr.
> Tester in room 104.

I think I'll continue arguing in my spare time. :)

> > > Clearly extending this through to run-time would add a huge testing
> > > infrastructure that would need maintaining, but allowing people to
> > > add their own codes to the syntax-checker base might mollify them a
> > > bit about the prospect of future language change.
> > >
> > > Call it the PythOnGuard (TM) database. :-) - if your programs would
> > > break you'll be mailed before it's committed to production.
> >
> > Sounds like some kind of huge test suite.  The problem is, there's
> > always *something* that breaks... :-(
> >
> OK. The hugeness of the test suite was precisely what made me stick
> to syntax. Do you think quality would benefit by an enlargement of
> the test suite to non-distributed code?

The quality of what?  We need lots more test, probably 40% of the C
code isn't covered by the test suite.

> Couple it with a few polling buttons from "I wouldn't mind fixing
> this breakage" to "I'ma get my gun and come looking for you" and you
> might obtain a measure of resistance *from people whose code would
> actually be broken*.  Clearly this should not necessarily be the
> arbiter of development, but it might allow you to tell people whose
> code hadn't broken so far to just PythOnGuard it and not complain
> until something *did* break.

I think it's too simplistic to expect much out of testing a large body
of real life code.  Much of the expected breakage only shows up when
an application is run on real-life data.  Maybe running PyChecker on a
large body of code would be a good idea, except that then the code
would first have to be made PyChecker-clean -- and that's a moving
target.

> Also good for news releases: "What breaks in this version?" (I can
> see Paul Rubin loving that one).

It's easy to list the things that could potentially break.  It's
usually impossible to find whether they are used in a particular body
of code without running a thorough test suite *for that code*.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)