[Python-Dev] (214)

[Tim Peters]

[Just van Rossum]
> (Just to make sure you guys know; there's currently a thread in c.l.py
> about the new 2.0 features. Not a *single* person stood up to defend
> PEP 214: noone seems to like it.)

But that's not true!  I defended it <wink>.  Alas (or "thank God!",
depending on how you look at it), I sent my "In praise of" post to the
mailing list and apparently the list->news gateway dropped it on the floor.

It most reminds me of the introduction of class.__private names.  Except I
don't think *anyone* was a fan of those besides your brother (I was neutral,
but we had a long & quite fun Devil's Advocate debate anyway), and the
opposition was far more strident than it's yet gotten on PEP 214.  I liked
__private names a lot after I used them, and, as I said in my unseen post,
having used the new print gimmick several times "for real" now I don't ever
want to go back.

The people most opposed seem to be those who worked hard to learn about
sys.__stdout__ and exactly why they need a try/finally block <0.9 wink>.
Some of the Python-Dev'ers have objected too, but much more quietly --
principled objections always get lost in the noise.

doubting-that-python's-future-hangs-in-the-balance-ly y'rs  - tim