"as" keyword woes

[Carl Banks]

On Dec 3, 11:42 pm, "Warren DeLano" <war... at delsci.com> wrote:
> Except that Python syntax has proven itself to be a non-backwards
> compatible moving target.  Eliminating cruft and adding new
> functionality is one thing, but introducing a whole new two-letter
> keyword so long after the game has begun?  That seems well over the line
> of what can be considered reasonable.

"as" has been in the language as a hybrid keyword/identifier since
Python 2.0, released in 2000, and it was always the plan to eventually
make it a full keyword.  (I'm not sure when they decided to finish the
job in 2.6.)  They could have just made it a keyword right then and
broke backwards compatibility instantly, instead they gave developers
an eight year transition period.

I think that is reasonable enough.


You know, with Python being the kind of language that does have
frequent releases which do carefully break backwards compatibility, if
you are using it and expecting your code to work with future versions,
it's your respsonsibility to keep up with planned language changes.
You didn't.  You were the one who dropped the ball here, not the
Python developers.

So stop complaining.  If you don't want to take a few minutes a year
to visit Python.org to see what changes are planned for upcoming
releases, then feel free to use a language like Java that has the
corporate backing to keep bad decisions around for decades.


Carl Banks