What python can NOT do?

[Terry Reedy]

exarkun at twistedmatrix.com wrote:

> For my part, I will agree with John.  I feel like Python's big 
> shortcomings stem from the areas he mentioned.  They're related to each 
> other as well - the lack of a standard hampers the development of a less 
> naive interpreter (either one based on CPython or another one).

The reference manual is *intended* to define the 'standard' Python 
language.

 > It
> doesn't completely prevent such development (obviously, as CPython 
> continues to undergo development, and there are a number of alternate 
> runtimes for Python-like languages), but there's clearly a cost 
> associated with the fact that in order to do this development, a lot of 
> time has to be spent figuring out what Python *is*.  This is the kind of 
> thing that a standard would help with.

Such developers occasionally raise questions about ambiguities in the 
ref manual on the pydev list. This is part of the editing process.

There is an effort underway to separate the CPython test suite into two 
parts: test of standard Python behavior, which all implementations 
should pass, and tests of the CPython implementation, which other 
implementations need not pass.  It will move as fast as volunteer effort 
moves it.

tjr