PEP 3131: Supporting Non-ASCII Identifiers

["Martin v. Löwis"]

> After 175 replies (and counting), the only thing that is clear is the
> controversy around this PEP. Most people are very strong for or
> against it, with little middle ground in between. I'm not saying that
> every change must meet 100% acceptance, but here there is definitely a
> strong opposition to it. Accepting this PEP would upset lots of people
> as it seems, and it's interesting that quite a few are not even native
> english speakers.

I believe there is a lot of middle ground, but those people don't speak
up. I interviewed about 20 programmers (none of them Python users), and
most took the position "I might not use it myself, but it surely
can't hurt having it, and there surely are people who would use it".
2 people were strongly in favor, and 3 were strongly opposed.

Of course, those people wouldn't take a lot of effort to defend their
position in a usenet group. So that the majority of the responses
comes from people with strong feelings either way is no surprise.

Regards,
Martin