Eliminating upgrade risk

[Christian Tanzer]

"James C. Ahlstrom" <jim at interet.com> wrote:

> Robin Becker wrote:
> 
> > If the advice from the Gods is that Python is a 'research' language then
> > I'll know better what to do.
> 
> I am afraid I have to agree with Robin here.  My company "solved"
> this problem by staying with Python 1.5.2.  I do plan to upgrade when
> I have the time, but absent any tools to at least flag incompatibilities
> this may never happen.

Starting with Python 1.5, I never yet had serious difficulties in
upgrading to new Python versions. If only Pythonlabs kept their
release ccyle better decoupled from ours, we might even ship our
products with a more current Python version than 1.5.2 now ;-)

> The problem is that the new Python features, as wonderful as they are,
> are chosen for Computer Science Purity, not day-to-working-day
> importance to someone actually trying to write a widely used bullet
> proof program.  The current rate of language change is fine for a
> student or casual programmer I'm sure, but I don't have that luxury.

Much as I am concerned about the effects of the division change, I
think you're way off the mark here.

I'm thankful to Guido and his gang for improving the language as they
do. Things like unicode, augmented assignment, iterators, generators,
type/class unification improve my life as a professional programmer.

But-then-I-didn't-stay-with-FORTRAN-either-y'rs,
Christian

-- 
Christian Tanzer                                         tanzer at swing.co.at
Glasauergasse 32                                       Tel: +43 1 876 62 36
A-1130 Vienna, Austria                                 Fax: +43 1 877 66 92