language growth

[Russell Turpin]

weeks at vitus.scs.agilent.com (Greg Weeks) wrote in message news:<1000085015.952637 at cswreg.cos.agilent.com>...
> I just happened to notice a PEP stating that a certain 
> additional construct would be "a good idea".  I imagine 
> that there are lots of good ideas out there, genuine and 
> perhaps even significant language improvements.  But I'm
> move convinced of this: If every significant language 
> improvement were added to the language, it wouldn't be 
> an improvement at all.  All those good things would add 
> up to a bad thing. ..

Amen, brother!

> .. The optimal size for a language is not enormous.

The optimal size for a language is small. One of the 
most important qualities of Python is that it is small,
and its features are reasonably orthogonal. 

> So, it seems to me that at some point it is desirable 
> to reject good ideas. The bar needs to be raised to 
> allow only great ideas, and then at some later point to 
> allow only insanely great ideas.  At that point the 
> language will change glacially, if at all.

The ideal improvement is fully backward compatible, 
provides significant benefit for only minor new thing
that must be learned, and slides neatly onto existing
features. Like list comprehensions. Backward 
compatibility is best sacrificed when obsolete warts
are replaced. 

Russell