gratuitous new features in 2.0

[Aahz Maruch]

In article <slrn8qbdro.4aa.nascheme at cranky.arctrix.com>,
Neil Schemenauer <nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca> wrote:
>Andrew Kuchling <akuchlin at mems-exchange.org> wrote:
>>
>>Agreed; there is a small (but apparently growing) number of people
>>unhappy with the unprecedented slew of added features to 2.0.  I'm
>>particularly irked by weird special cases, like the .setdefault(key,
>>default_value) method of dictionaries that was recently added.
>
>My beef is with the new syntax for print.  I don't like new
>syntax unless absolutely necessary.  What would have been wrong
>with:
>
>    write(sys.stderr, "foo", "bar", "baz")
>
>instead of:
>
>    print >>sys.stderr, "foo", "bar", "baz"
>
>Yuck, it looks like C++ or Perl.  I'm with Andrew on the
>setdefault() method as well.

I've been exchanging some e-mail with Guido and Barry about this;
Guido particularly isn't following the discussion here.  Unfortunately,
I seem to be unable to find a sufficiently powerful argument to sway
BDFL's mind.  My primary argument at this point is that I *shouldn't*
have to argue against PEP 0214: the onus should be on whoever is
proposing a language change to develop a powerful argument in favor.  So
far, I haven't seen one.

Tim Peters apparently likes this proposal, but his post only ended up on
the mailing list, not the newsgroup; Barry was kind enough to send me
this URL:
http://www.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2000-August/114557.html

Note that while I don't have a strong visceral reaction against
dict.setdefault(), I have to agree with the dismay at the speed with
which it's going in.
--
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