Why we will use obj$func() often

[A.M. Kuchling]

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 18:28:37 -0700, 
	Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> wrote:
> Being a fan of Io, I think prototype-languages are interesting.  Even so
> far, I lost interest in looking at the actual main feature of Prothon,
> after seeing all the extra baggage that was brought on in unecessary
> stylistic changes.

There's a rule in experiments that you should only change one thing at a
time, trying to answer a single question with each change. Prothon started
out asking two questions:

* Does implementing an interpreter on top of the Apache Portable Runtime 
  for the sake of free threading work?  (Presumably the answer is yes, since
  Prothon does run.  I haven't seen performance numbers on Prothon, though.)
* Is prototyping a workable replacement for a class-based object system?
  Unclear, since I don't know that anyone has written sizable systems
  in Prothon yet.
  
The problem is that if you then make a whole bunch of additional changes --
a 'with' statement, changing the rules for indenting, changing the names of
various built-in methods -- it becomes harder for Python users to try out
the new language for a while because there are more changes they have to
cope with.  After a certain point the number of crossover users dwindles to
near-zero.  None of these changes is critical or results in a 100% 
improvement in functionality (or even a 10% one), but their collective 
effect is to make the distance too great to cross conveniently; you might as
well start a new language with a blank sheet of paper at that point.  

--amk