Python 1.6 alpha 1 released

[John Aycock]

Aahz Maruch <aahz at netcom.com> wrote:
> 
> I'm sympathetic.  We only upgraded our production system from 1.5.1 to
> 1.5.2 last week, because we'd made a number of 1.5.1-specific hacks and
> had to back them out correctly for 1.5.2.  Now we'll have to do the same
> for 1.6, but as with the 1.5.2 upgrade, we don't have to follow Guido's
> timeline.

I'm not going to take sides here, but I coincidentally just finished
reading something highly relevant:

	`I'd like to insist that if they [the programming languages
	 people] add something to a language, or change something in
	 a language, they also provide us with the algorithm which will
	 make the transfer in our programs so that we can automatically
	 translate our programs...'

That's part of the keynote address made by (the late) Grace Murray Hopper
to the 1978 ACM History of Programming Languages Conference.  Excellent
reading.

Although I don't have time to volunteer, it wouldn't be too difficult
to write a program which would look through existing Python code and
warn of potential uses of these changed constructs.

John