Gratuitous Change (Was: Re: "in" operator for strings)

[Chris Gonnerman]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com>
Subject: Re: "in" operator for strings
[ hack ]

> But now here we are, less than six months after a major release, looking
at
> tweaks and fiddles and optimizations. It strikes me that the Python
> community is in danger of falling victim to the "see how much more we can
> stuff in without breaking backwards compatibility" syndrome.  Just because
a
> proposed change doesn't break existing code doesn't necessarily make it a
> good thing. Subtle changes to the semantics of the language invalidate
> teaching materials, for example.
>
> The situation seemd to me to be better and more rational when we expected
> Python 3K to be a major break from current traditions. At least this gave
> the twiddlers and the tweakers some hope, without putting the existing
> language at risk. There are undoubtledy arguments for many of the 2.1
> changes, but I findsome of them unconvincing. Why not keep Python as it is
> now, and prodce 3K about 998 years early?
>
> There's a lot to be said for stability.

DITTO.  This is my thought exactly.

I don't forsee upgrading to 2.1.  I still haven't gotten my main Linux
workstation up to 2.0
and frankly haven't missed it much, but I am using 2.0 on my Windows 98
system.

The "nested scopes" change (which as I understand it, creates namespaces for
each function
as it is called) is the only one I have heard about that I like, but frankly
it isn't important enough
to be worth putting up with all the other changes.

If it ain't broken, DON'T FIX IT!