[Python-Dev] Proposed schedule for Python 3.4

[Nick Coghlan]

On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 8:43 PM, Larry Hastings <larry at hastings.org> wrote:
> Begging for feedback doesn't mean you'll get any,

I received a fair number of complaints from people that wanted to
experiment with yield from, but couldn't, because the first alpha
wasn't out yet and they weren't sufficiently interested to go to the
effort of building their own copy of Python.

*People like to try out the new versions*, so I have often received
useful feedback during alpha periods - all it takes is one interested
person from outside the core development team to get interested in a
new feature and we can have a useful conversation. By *refusing* to
release the alpha early you are *guaranteeing* I won't get the early
feedback I want on the new features that are likely to come in 3.4.

That's your prerogative as RM of course, but you haven't given any
reason beyond the circular "I don't care about enabling feedback from
people that can't or won't build from source, because people that
can't or won't build from source don't provide useful feedback". I'm
*not* happy about that attitude, because it's based on a blatantly
false premise. If it was true, we wouldn't bother with alpha releases
*at all*, and instead just skip straight to feature freeze and beta
releases.

Give me a reason like "I don't want to because I want to concentrate
the release management work into a 6 month period", and I'll accept
it, but don't try to rationalise it with statements about user
feedback that I know from experience to be untrue.

Regards,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia