PEP scepticism

[Guido van Rossum]

Andrew Kuchling <akuchlin at mems-exchange.org> writes:

> It's also a matter of where effort is expended for the most benefit.
> The new features such as static scoping, list comprehensions, &c., are
> nice to have and I'm pleased that the list of language shortcomings is
> shrinking.  But would I rather have had list comprehensions or a
> catalog of all Python extensions similar to CPAN?  I'd have much
> preferred the latter, because it would make a greater improvement in
> my programming life than, say, list comprehensions do.  This doesn't
> imply that list comprehensions don't improve my life at all (they do),
> but
> 
> I've noticed that in online forums, people now rarely beat up on
> Python for the language itself, except for the old reliable
> indentation knee-jerk reaction.  Instead people write about how
> convenient CPAN makes it to find modules, or how useful the XML
> modules are, or how EJB lets them write elaborate business systems.  I
> don't think improving Python the language will win new converts at
> this point; improving the standard library, development environments,
> or the documentation is more likely to bear fruit.

Thanks, Andrew.  That was a very good point you made in an otherwise
"same-old-same-old" thread.

I'm guilty of this myself: by nature, I'm more interested in making
the language better than in adding convenience to finding 3rd party
modules.  (I did once have an interest in creating a better IDE, but
that interest has waned now there are so many commercial offerings.)

How is the catalog-sig doing, by the way?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)