Changes to Python.

[Andrew M. Kuchling]

Paul Prescod writes:
>My theory is that there is no change to Python that would not be met with
>a chorus of "don't ruin our perfect language." If only we could experiment
>with alternate universes it would be interesting to go back in time and
>remove some of Python's features and then re-propose them as extensions.

	The question is, is the added functionality worth the changes?
Some changes, like 1..7 as a synonym for range(8) or a do...while
control structure, are nice bits of syntactic sugar, but they don't
enable any new patterns of programming, in the way that static typing
or ExtensionClasses would.  Lots of changes are possible, but only a
few are worth the compatibility problems; the hard part is, which ones
are those?  There are various changes I'd like to see (do...while
would make me do a little dance, doubtless to the delight of my
co-workers) but none that I'd violently argue for.
	
-- 
A.M. Kuchling			http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/
Too little freedom makes life confusingly clumsy; too much, clumsily
confusing. Luckily, the tension between freedom and restraint eventually gets
severed by Guido's Razor.
    -- Tim Peters, 29 Apr 1998