2.1 vs. 2.2

[Brad Bollenbach]

"Jens Baader" <nospam at nospam.com> wrote in 
news:3cb8a755$0$12714$9b622d9e at news.freenet.de:

> I'm downloading Python 2.2.1 right now and I wonder
> why you still produce bugfix releases for the old 2.1 development line.
> It seems that Python 2.2 is somewhat broken. If not what's the
> reason that keeps the people from upgrading to 2.2?

Simple; there are environments that are running versions older than the 
latest and greatest versions. If upgrading to the newest Python isn't in 
the cards for these individuals/companies/whatever, but it's known that 
there are bugs in older versions, these should be fixed.

> Another question: When will we see an official ISO/ANSI standard
> for Python? I dislike working with nonstandardized languages.
> The fact that radical language changes are still made (the
> type/class unification) seem to suggest that Python is still not
> mature enough for a real standard. Or maybe Python and
> the other "newschool" languages (like Ruby, Java) are not
> meant to by standardized? Don't know but I really would
> like to. Are there any plans to get Python "stable" or will
> the language continue to change with each major release
> of the interpreter?

Well...if you're going to flame a language for lack of "standardization" do 
it to Perl or something. :) The only thing they have is a "reference 
implementation". At least Python has something roughly resembling a 
"language spec" in its documentation, hence the fact that we have multiple 
implementations (Jython and Stackless, along with the "official" CPython).

I can't say it's held me back from using Python to pursue laziness (and 
have a little bit of fun in the process).

Just like martellibot would say: "pragmatism trumps correctness".