[Python-Dev] PEP 355 status

[Jason Orendorff]

On 9/30/06, Giovanni Bajo <rasky at develer.com> wrote:
> Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > OK. Pronouncement: PEP 355 is dead. [...]
>
> It would be terrific if you gave us some clue about what is
> wrong in PEP355, [...]

Here are my guesses.  I believe Guido rejected this PEP for a lot of reasons.

By the way, what I'm about to do is known as "channeling Guido
(badly)" and I'm pretty sure it annoys him.  Sorry, Guido.  Please
don't treat the following as authoritative; I have never met Guido and
obviously I cannot speak for him.

- I don't think Guido ever saw much benefit from "path objects".  That
is, the Motivation was not compelling.  I think the main motivation is
to eliminate some clutter and add a handful of useful methods to the
stdlib, so it's easy to see how this could be the case.

- Guido just flat-out didn't like the looks of the PEP.  Too much
weirdness.  (path.py contains more weirdness, including some stuff
Guido particularly disliked, and I think it's fair to say that PEP355
suffered somewhat by association.)

- Any proposal to add a Second Way To Do It has to meet a very high
standard.  PEP355 was too big to be considered an incremental change.
Yet it didn't even attempt to fix all the perceived problems with the
existing APIs.  A more thorough job would have had a better chance.

- Nobody liked the API design--too many methods.

- Now we're hearing rumors of better ideas out there, which comes as a relief.

I suspect any one of these could have scuttled the proposal.

-j