Python 1.6 alpha 1 released

[Bjorn Pettersen]

Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> 
> James Logajan <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> wrote:
> > Also, how good are you at math? You seem to feel that 5 minutes of "Guido
> > the god's" time is of much more value than that of 1000 knuckle-dragging
> > Neanderthal programmers like myself spending a mere 10 minutes each to
> make
> > sure their code doesn't break. Of course, if we happen to take more than
> 10
> > minutes its our own damn fault I'm sure you'll agree.
> 
> the strange thing here is that there are changes listed on
> that page that are far more difficult to spot and fix, but for
> some reason, neither you or bjorn seem to care.

Surely you jest.  The crux of the matter here though, is that a
documented interface is being changed in backwards incompatible ways (I
haven't seen anyone claim that examples in the manual are not
documentation...)  Since there is almost no chance of changing Guido's
mind, it would just be futile to argue about e.g. multiargument append
where the manual says one thing and the implementation does another
(besides I was lucky enough not to get bit by that -- probably because I
read the manual...)

> instead, bjorn announced that he'd never upgrade to 1.6
> based on a single change in 1.6a1, despite the fact that
> there will be a 1.6a2, a3, b1, b2, rc1, etc. before it's time
> to really make that decision.

Well, to be correct, I said that this change in documented behavior
would force me to put upgrade plans on hold.  If this change remains, I
would still have to make the same decision no matter how many alpha and
beta releases we have in the next two months.

> others have politely asked for backwards compatibility on
> this one (which would mean *adding* extra code to handle
> multiple calling syntaxes).  someone will probably come up
> with a patch well before the next alpha, but probably not
> because you guys are flaming away on this newsgroup.

It would be very nice if "someone" could do that, but based on the
rethoric I've seen from you on this issue, and the absence of comment
from Guido, I certainly don't feel confident that it would be accepted. 
As far as flamage is going, you should probably go back and read through
your own posts one more time.  You might even want to read through some
of your other posts, if I remember correctly you were quite hefty in
your flamage of the poor JPython newbie from Volvo.

-b