How to guard against bugs like this one?

[kj]

In <mailman.1795.1265135424.28905.python-list at python.org> Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> writes:

>On 2/2/2010 9:13 AM, kj wrote:

>>> As for fixing it, unfortunately it's not quite so simple to fix without
>>> breaking backwards-compatibility. The opportunity to do so for Python 3.0
>>> was missed.
>>
>> This last point is to me the most befuddling of all.  Does anyone
>> know why this opportunity was missed for 3.0?  Anyone out there
>> with the inside scoop on this?  Was the fixing of this problem
>> discussed in some PEP or some mailing list thread?  (I've tried
>> Googling this but did not hit on the right keywords to bring up
>> the deliberations I'm looking for.)

>There was a proposal to put the whole stdlib into a gigantic package, so 
>that

>import itertools

>would become, for instance

>import std.itertools.

>Guido rejected that. I believe he both did not like it and was concerned 
>about making upgrade to 3.x even harder. The discussion was probably on 
>the now closed py3k list.


Thanks.  I'll look for this thread.

~K