[Python-ideas] Proposal: Moratorium on Python language changes

[Stefan Behnel]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> I propose a moratorium on language changes. This would be a period of
> several years during which no changes to Python's grammar or language
> semantics will be accepted. The reason is that frequent changes to the
> language cause pain for implementors of alternate implementations
> (Jython, IronPython, PyPy, and others probably already in the wings)

As one of the lead developers of the Cython project, which is following
CPython at some distance but at fast pace (and high speed ;), I honestly
wouldn't mind such a moratorium.

As a Python language user, I must say that I cannot remember any recent(?)
language syntax proposal on python-ideas that would have made the language
substantially better. Plus, a lot of the code that gets written even today
is still required to stay Py2.x compatible, sometimes as old as 2.3.
Especially library or tooling code will often not even use Python 2.6
features for a while, let alone Python 3.x features. That doesn't mean you
can't 2to3 it, it just means that it won't use the new syntax features.

I guess that makes a +1 from my side.

Stefan