PEP scepticism

[Bernhard Reiter]

In article <mailman.993788863.16675.python-list at python.org>,
	barry at digicool.com (Barry A. Warsaw) writes:
>>>>>> "PP" == Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> writes:
> 
>     PP> It annoys me when people equate the PEP process with the
>     PP> adding of features. 

True. In general I like the PEP process.
As Barry continues to explain its value as a documentation of the 
debate and the decisions is also high.

My general warning has something do to with the process though,
as a non-technical reason exist why people participating in the
processes will have higher chances to vote for inclusing of features,
because being exceptional python programmers.

I want the people participating to aware of this situation so they
can have it in the back of their mind and be more conservative about 
some feature request namely complicated syntactic sugar.

> The other purpose for PEPs -- IMO more important and often overlooked
> -- is to provide a concrete historical record for decisions made 

> I have a nagging feeling that `creeping featurism' is like pork-barrel
> politics.  In one breath people will decry the special interests that
> they don't like or don't care about, while in the next, ask for their
> own pet project to be funded.  

My motivation to raise the issue came after discussing my unprecise
feeling about this with Bernhard Herzog. 
I track python language development for quite a bit of time and
generally we all do a good job. However I can't help that I feel we
should resist a bit more against feature additions which does not
mean there should not be any.

	Bernhard
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