automatic reclaiminig of limited resources (was Re: [Python-Dev] Product iteration)

[Tim Peters]

Peter, what would you say if someone told you your Python programs would
run, oh, 30% faster, but in return for that you could no longer rely on
refcount semantics?  What do you think *most* people would say?  I don't
know, but I'm certain I'd hear different answers from different people.

Don't fall into the trap of believing that refcounting is a pure win!
JPython and Vyper and the MS runtime aren't doing "real gc" just because
they want to irritate people <wink>.  There are tradeoffs here, and new
Python code is probably more interesting to MS than old Python code.  I
personally don't think you'd find this a big deal if you had *always* needed
to do explicit .close()-like calls in Python, and most programmers (across
the world and across languages) have never used a language in which they
*didn't* need to do explicit closes.  Python has plenty of other attractions
for them.  MS may very well be delighted to leave the legacy Python market
to BeOpen <0.9 wink>.

remind-me-to-call-uncle-bill-in-the-morning-ly y'rs  - tim