[Python-Dev] Backwards Incompatibility

[Paul Prescod]

Jeremy Hylton wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> Why didn't you say it was irresponsible then? <0.5 wink>  If you're
> just repeating your earlier arguments, I apologize for the rhetoric
> :-).

I haven't followed this PEP at all. I think the feature is neat and I
would like it. But to the average person, this is a pretty esoteric
issue.

But I do think that we should have a general principle that we do not
knowingly break code without warning. It doesn't matter what the
particular PEP is. It doesn't matter whether I like it.

The reason I wrote the backwards compatibility PEP as not to restrict
change but to enable it. If people trust us (they do not yet) then we
can discuss long-term migration paths that may break code but they will
be comfortable that they will have plenty of opportunity to move into
the new world. So we could decide to change the keyword "def" to
"define" and people would know that the change over would take a couple
of years and they would be able to get from here to there.

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