PEP scepticism

[Guido van Rossum]

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

> No it isn't.  Adding language features does not improve the confusing
> and incomplete MIME modules currently in the standard library.

Barry Warsaw is working on mimelib (http://mimelib.sourceforge.net/)
and I expect that this will be added to the 2.2 CVS tree soon!

> It does not remove the outdated demo programs from the distribution.

Maybe, in the light of the successful PEP 260, someone should write a
PEP about removing deadwood from the demos?  I'm all for it!  (Also
more ancient library modules can be deprecated, like all the irix5
cruft.  Again, I need help here!

> It does not add more documentation.

I don't think that's an area where Python is currently particularly
lacking.  Fred has done a great job.  (BTW, when are you going to add
all the new Python books to the Python bookstore? :-)

> It does not bring us any closer to having a module catalog.  It does
> not increase Python's visibility outside of the Python community.

We're working on that.  I hope that the Python events at the O'Reilly
conference next month and LinuxWorld in August will reach a lot of
outsiders.

> My point is that users are not currently saying "Gosh, Python
> doesn't have generators, so I won't use it."  They're saying "Wow,
> there's a lot of useful libraries for Java; I'd better use it to be
> able to use them."

Point taken.

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