Language change and code breaks

[Guido van Rossum]

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes (after much good stuff about
transitioning):

> After the transition period, screw the professional programmers 
> who won't take the time to modify their existing code and yet 
> who selfishly insist that their wonderful program *must* be
> allowed to continue running under the new Python without 
> problem.

Well, I don't know about you, but *I* am reluctant to say "screw you"
to all those people who depend on Python script written by
professional programmers who no longer work there.

I also don't want to fork the code base.  There are *still* folks
using Perl4 scripts who can't upgrade.  I don't want to do that to the
community.

So indeed, we'll need to be *very* careful with this kind of
transition, providing tools, warnings, anything we can think of.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)