Booleans, integer division, backwards compatibility; where is Python going?

[James Logajan]

philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) wrote:
> Another problem is that when a language is constantly changing, it 
> becomes necessary to constantly relearn it. Python has changed a lot 
> in the last few years, for example new operators such as +=, and 
> allowing users to subclass from builtin types, are big (and useful) 
> changes. Python 1.5.1 was an immature language that could benefit 
> from changing.

Version 1.5.2 was sufficiently complete and long-lived enough that I 
established it as the version I would develop against.

> Is there a final destination in sight, which these changes are 
> leading to?

The answer to this isn't as interesting to me as _when_ will this tinkering 
end? Something that isn't up for debate: because of the problems I have 
actually encountered with making code work with the many extant versions of 
Python, I will no longer be doing any new projects in the language and am 
not recommending Python to anyone. The language tinkering is one of several 
reasons I left Python and this newsgroup many months ago. (I have 
resubscribed recently to find out if there was a way to rework an old 
Tkinter app of mine that people have asked for some changes to, and will be 
exiting here in a few days.)