Eliminating upgrade risk

[Peter Hansen]

John Roth wrote:
> 
> After enduring the PEP 238 threads for far too long, as well as other
> threads, I've come to the conclusion that Python is simply too unstable
> for real use.

Do you really mean "is" too unstable, or you mean it looks like it 
"might be" unstable, solely because of the proposals about changing the
way the / operator works?

I've used Python for about a year and a half in dozens of practical 
areas in industry.  I consider it *bar none* the most stable language
I've ever used.  Not only with respect to the stability of the
applications I write, but also the runtime (I can hardly recall a crash,
although I'm sure I've had a few when using calldll around third-party
DLLs) and definitely *even the language definition*.

Changing from 1.5.2 to 2.1 required us to do, let me see: nothing!
I reviewed the list of changes, predicted we would not be impacted,
and so far (after several months of ongoing development and continued
use of our many utilities and applications) I've been proven correct.

So I'm guessing you really just mean that this PEP 238 proposal
is scarey.  I agree, to the extent that code breakage is never nice
to contemplate, but with the ongoing consideration being given to the
issue by the developers, I'm reasonably satisfied that even this
drastic change will end up having relatively little effect on my
opinion of Python's stability.  Planning over two years in 
advance and guaranteeing the breakage will only occur when
a major upgrade (Python 3.0) is released is pretty much the
best you could hope for from any language.  After all, by convention
major upgrades are where you are supposed to *expect* code
breakage.

> Hopefully, this is going to provide more food for thought than fuel for the
> flames.

I hope you don't consider this a flame.  But I'm not responding to 
the  suggestion of "required" other than to say I don't think it's
really necessary (because I don't think it's really necessary...
as should be evident from the above).

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com