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

[Jesse Noller]

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 2:06 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

> I see the smiley, but just in case you were half serious, I really
> think we should stick to the policy and not make exceptions for
> personal pet peeves.

The only reason I would argue against that would be for the fact that
AFAIK, it's "nearly done and ready" - that being said, that is a
specious argument.

But I agree - no exceptions makes sense.

> Obviously there are many things we could change in the standard
> library that would still affect the ability to upgrade easily (see the
> recent issues with 2.6.3 and 2.6.4), and we should be exercising a lot
> of restraint in this are as well. But language changes affect other
> implementations the most (I think). They also coincidentally speak
> most to the imagination of the young, eager-to-add-their-pet-feature
> amateur language designer crowd who so often fill python-ideas with
> heated discussions.

Agreed; there's been discussion on disutils-sig and other places (such
as the language summit) revolving around a "single, shared" standard
library for all of the implementations. So long as the syntax is
unchanged, we can upgrade/improve the stdlib over time, and make it
used for the various implementations.

jesse