[Python-Dev] PEPs and cons (was: Re: Store timestamps as decimal.Decimal objects)

[Stefan Behnel]

Nick Coghlan, 31.01.2012 12:11:
> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 7:42 PM, Victor Stinner wrote:
>>> I think this is definitely worth elaborating in a PEP (to recap the
>>> long discussion in #11457 if nothing else).
>>
>> The discussion in issues #13882 and #11457 already lists many
>> alternatives with their costs and benefits, but I can produce a PEP if
>> you need a summary.
> 
> PEPs are about more than just providing a summary - they're about
> presenting the alternatives in a clear form instead of having them
> scattered across a long meandering tracker discussion.

There was a keynote by Jan Lehnardt (of CouchDB fame) on last year's
PyCon-DE on the end of language wars and why we should just give each other
a hug and get along and all that. To seed some better understanding, he had
come up with mottoes for the Ruby and Python language communities, which
find themselves in continuous quarrel. I remember the motto for Python
being "you do it right - and you document it".

A clear hit IMHO. Decisions about language changes and environmental
changes (such as the stdlib) aren't easily taken in the Python world, but
when they are taken, they tend to show a good amount of well reflected
common sense, and we make it transparent how they come to be by writing a
PEP about them, so that we (and others) can go back and read them up later
on when they are being questioned again or when similar problems appear in
other languages. That's a good thing, and we should keep that up.

Stefan