[Python-ideas] Where-statement (Proposal for function expressions)

[MRAB]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 11:29 AM, Jan Kaliszewski<zuo at chopin.edu.pl> wrote:
>> Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>>
>>> The 'where' proposal actually looks nice to me. (Maybe I've been
>>> studying functional languages too much lately :-). My biggest problem
>>> with this concrete proposal is that 'where' means something completely
>>> different in SQL (which I've also studied too much lately :-).
>>>
>>> However, I think we should focus on keeping the language stable rather
>>> than keep tinkering with it. Let's help 3rd party developers port
>>> their work to 3.1 rather than planning 3.1's obsolescence.
>> I believe it's at the other 'end for stick' of development process and
>> doesn't hurt 3.1 at all.
> 
> Actually, adding too many new features post 3.1 *could* hurt 3.1 -- it
> could slow adoption because people might decide to wait for 3.2 which
> they expect to be even better. Plus the implementation of 3.2 features
> uses up energy that would be better spent elsewhere (the Python
> community has a chronic shortage of hands to help with menial task
> like porting 3rd party code to 3.1).
> 
> Another argument against new features is that the people who have the
> hardest time moving to 3.1 are those who are most bothered by change
> in general. If they view the language as "moving too fast" they might
> decide to move to a language that moves more slowly, or just stick
> with Python 2.4, which is nearly as bad.
> 
> A more cynical view (the like of which I've heard expressed about Perl
> 6) would be that python-ideas is where we keep those folks occupied
> who love to argue about new features but are unlikely to contribute
> anything... :-)
> 
Or it's where the bikeshedding gets done; if an idea makes out of
python-ideas then any critic of the new feature can be pointed to the
relevant thread and told "already discussed, see!". :-)