ANNOUNCE: A Python 2.1 release candidate!

[Robin Becker]

In article <3AD8A21D.34800DB9 at home.com>, Don O'Donnell <donod at home.com>
writes
...
>
>PLEASE DON'T DUMB DOWN PYTHON... IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL AS IT IS!
>
....
>> In 2.2, it will become a SyntaxError instead.
>> 
>How sad.
>
>-don
it often seems that the Gods are unaware of the effects of their God
like design decisions; they appear to want everyone to read and
understand every detail of the scriptures and at the same time make
these scriptures terse and opaque. The Gods are often patronising and
attempt to justify changes to their past erroneous decisions by
asserting surprise to the masses.

I'm not in the least suprised by the current __debug__ behaviour. I'm
more suprised by magic behaviour. Exactly what are the magic variables,
where are they documented and why if tracing function entry and exits is
so useful don't we have a -trace flag.  

A programming language with more than 240 documents about
improvements/changes can hardly be optimal and the retreat into python-
dev seems indicative of something wrong.
-- 
Robin Becker