Python evolution: Unease

[Iwan van der Kleyn]

Please ignore if you are allergic to ramblings :-)

Despite a puritan streak I've always tried to refrain from language wars 
or syntax bickering; call it enforced pragmatism. That's the main reason 
why I've liked Python: it's elegant and simple and still dynamic and 
flexible. You could do worse for a clean and pragmatic language.

I do know my Smaltalk from my Common Lisp and my Ruby from my C#, so I 
think I'm quite capable of escaping the "Blub paradox" 
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BlubParadox. I do miss some slick features in 
Python. But the nice thing about Python is that in those cases I can use 
its dynamism to implement it myself (and usually somebody else has done 
it for me, of course).

In the end I'm not a language guru nor a framework wizard, but a mere 
mortal who designs and writes programs for end-users.  For that task I 
need: a better standard ide, an integrated db interface with a proper 
set of db drivers (!!), a better debugger, a standard widget/windows 
toolkit, something akin to a standard for web programming, better 
documentation, a standard lib which is better organized, a formalized 
set of protocols and patterns for program construction. And an 
interpreter which is fast enough to avoid using C or Pyrex in most 
obvious cases.

Many will say that Van Rossum's brainstorms/proposals as depicted in

http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=86641

will help in the above mentioned. And I'm certainly not against Optional 
ype checking.

But I see little to no efforts from the core python team to address my 
needs as listed above. They seem mainly to focus on the core attributes 
and syntax of the language. Very little or no efforts are taken to 
improve the infrastructure around the language.

And then I read the following sentence by Van Rossum:

"In order to make type inferencing a little more useful, I'd like to 
restrict certain forms of extreme dynamic behavior in Python"

In the end, it's mindset which counts. And I think that mindset is going 
to be determine the way foreward for Python: more features, increased 
complexity, less dynamism. Lots of syntax crud, without addressing the 
need to improve the infrastructure around the language.

In short: I symphatize Patrick Logan's feeling:

http://patricklogan.blogspot.com/2005/01/road-to-ruin.html








Regards,

Iwan van der Kleyn