[Python-Dev] Benchmarks why we need PEP 576/579/580

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Sun, 22 Jul 2018 22:11:25 +0200
Jeroen Demeyer <J.Demeyer at UGent.be> wrote:
> On 2018-07-22 14:52, Stefan Behnel wrote:
> > Someone has to maintain the *existing* code
> > base and help newcomers to get into it and understand it.  
> 
> This is an important point that people seem to be overlooking. The 
> complexity and maintenance burden of PEP 580 should be compared to the 
> status-quo. The existing code is complicated, yet nobody seems to find 
> that a problem. But when PEP 580 makes changes to that complicated code 
> (and documents some of the existing complexity), it's suddenly the fault 
> of PEP 580 that the code is complicated.
> 
> I also wonder if there is a psychological difference simply because this 
> is a PEP and not an issue on bugs.python.org. That might give the 
> impression that it's a more serious thing somehow. Previous 
> optimizations (https://bugs.python.org/issue26110 for example) were not 
> done in a PEP and nobody ever mentioned that the extra complexity might 
> be a problem.

Two things:
- the issue26110 changes are not very large, it's just two additional
  opcodes and a bit of support code
- more importantly, issue26110 is entirely internal changes, while you
  are proposing to add a new protocol (which is like a new API)

Regards

Antoine.