PEP0238 lament

[Tim Peters]

[James Logajan]
> ...
> Speaking of patterns, it unfortunately appears that Guido has a
> strong tendency to take the existing user base for granted, since he
> continues to keep the door open to code-breaking changes.

I'd say it's more the case that people project their particular concerns on
to the entire Python user base, and somehow mistake disagreement for being
ignored.  As I said before, Guido hears *all* the complaints, and, believe
it or not, the Python user base is composed of people, and people don't
agree.  It's Guido's job to make the best sense he can out of conflicting
desires (including but not limited to his own).

> There is only so much insult ("well, what you were doing was bad style
> anyway," or "you shouldn't have written code that depends on integer
> division(!)") and injury (the more Python you've written, the more
> likely something you wrote wont work with the latest version and will
> need to spend hours reviewing,just-in-case-anyway) before one decides
> that it just isn't worth the pain.

Of course.  Do you seriously think Guido is unaware of that?  OTOH, do you
seriously think 100% backward compatibility is an absolute criterion, immune
from competition with other claims?

> I do not want to continue to write more Python and expose myself
> to further risk of having it either become dependent on an un-maintained
> and minority release (e.g. "sorry, you should have upgraded to 3.1 years
> ago; who writes stuff on 2.1 these days anyway?") or having a growing
> body of code to constantly shepherd along to insure it runs on the next
> release.

Your choice, but my guess is that Guido has done an excellent job of
maintaining backward compatibility so far (he burned me by changing
str(long) to stop producing a trailing "L", and I must have spent nearly 20
minutes recovering from that -- BFD).

> That is the pragmatics from my point of view. And it doesn't give a
> damn what real or perceived "flaw" in the language is being addressed.

OK, I'll save this msg for the next time you ask for a change <0.9 wink>