How to break? (was Re: A modest PEP0238 suggestion)

[Aahz Maruch]

In article <9jjk9g$8tk$1 at newsy.ifm.liu.se>,
Paul Svensson <paul at svensson.org> wrote:
>
>The only choices that make sense to me here are, either we break stuff,
>or we do nothing.  Either way, we'll most likely have to revisit the
>issue if/when syntax for rationals is to be added to the language.

Well, no.  I think that there's now a fairly widespread agreement that
what we've got now is broken.  The question is, how do we switch to a
future such that new code isn't broken, while breaking as little old
code as possible?

Whoops!  Actually, that's the wrong question.  The *real* question is,
how do we break old code in a way that makes it least-painful to fix?

Phrased that way, I think it *has* to be true that there is never a
future in which old code can break silently.
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