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

[geremy condra]

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 8:31 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 5:15 PM, Jared Grubb <jared.grubb at gmail.com> wrote:
>> It would be a shame to discourage new ideas just because we are not willing
>> to implement them "now".
>>
>> I hope that any moratorium would not cut discussions of new ideas short,
>> would not change the tone of python-ideas, and would not discourage writing
>> PEP's for new language features (with the understanding that it will be a
>> while before they actually get implemented).
>
> Actually one of my goals with the moratorium is to discourage
> discussion of certain ideas that keep coming up forever and draining
> the energy of the list.

Personally, I think mandating that you bring working code to the table
when proposing a language change would take the number of requests
for, say, removing the GIL to pretty much nil.

> Also, I certainly don't hope that when the
> moratorium is lifted there are 20 language PEPs waiting for approval.
> Python's evolution needs to slow down as the user community grows.

Again, I doubt that very many of the people proposing some of these
changes have either the technical skills to pull them off or the
patience to maintain them for a year and a half while waiting for the
moratorium to lift. My guess is that you'll have about 300 half-baked
or just-started projects and only one or two good ones ready for PEP
consideration. Over the period of time you're talking about, that
doesn't seem -IMO- to be too much, too fast. Your mileage may
certainly vary.

Geremy Condra