[python-committers] My cavalier and aggressive manner, API change and bugs introduced for basically zero benefit

[Brian Curtin]

I've been on the sidelines for a while myself for a number of reasons,
but the shift to GitHub will pull me back in for sure, at least in
terms of code review. I look forward to actually contributing code
again soon, but easier tooling on reviews—rather, a shiny new one, as
I'm aware of Reitveld—is enough of a carrot to bring me back in.

On Sun, Jan 22, 2017 at 12:08 PM, Tal Einat <taleinat at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dormant core dev here. Not contributing at all due to severe lack of
> time in the past year and a half, not likely to have more time in the
> near future. Also no longer working with Python at all except as a
> hobby :(
>
> I could pull off a review once a month if it would actually help!
>
> On Sat, Jan 21, 2017 at 9:51 PM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
>> What I'm picking up from this is (as a gross oversimplification):
>>
>> * Victor _wants_ code reviews
>> * Raymond thinks we _need_ code reviews
>>
>> So the common theme here regardless of whether you agree with Raymond or
>> Victor's approach to development is that we are not getting enough code
>> reviews to go around. To me that's what the systemic issue is that this
>> email is bringing up.
>>
>> Now I think most of us don't think the solution to the lack of reviews is to
>> lower our standard of what it takes to become a core developer (this doesn't
>> mean we shouldn't do a better job of identifying potential candidates, just
>> that we shouldn't give people commit privileges after a single patch like
>> some projects do). To me that means we need to address why out of 79 core
>> developers only 39 have a single commit over the past year, 30/79 have more
>> than 12 commits over that same time scale, 15/79 people have more than 52
>> commits, and 2/79 people have over 365 commits
>> (https://github.com/python/cpython/graphs/contributors?from=2016-01-22&to=2017-01-21&type=c
>> for the stats).
>>
>> Some of you have said you're waiting for the GitHub migration before you
>> start contributing again, which I can understand (I'm going to be sending an
>> email with an update on that after this email to python-dev &
>> core-workflow). But for those that have not told me that I don't know what
>> it will take to get you involved again. For instance, not to pick on Andrew
>> but he hasn't committed anything but he obviously still cares about the
>> project. So what would it take to get Andrew to help review patches again so
>> that the next time something involving random comes through he feels like
>> taking a quick look?
>>
>> As I have said before, the reason I took on the GitHub migration is for us
>> core developers. I want our workflow to be as easy as possible so that we
>> can be as productive as possible. But the unspoken goal I have long-term is
>> to get to the point that even dormant core devs want to contribute again,
>> and to the point that everyone reviews a patch/month and more people
>> reviewing a patch/week (although I'll take a patch/year to start). I want to
>> get to the point that every person with commit privileges takes 30 minutes a
>> month to help with reviews and that the majority of folks take 30 minutes a
>> week to review (and please don't think this as a hard rule and if you don't
>> the privileges go away, view this as an aspirational goal). Even if people
>> who don't have time to review the kind of patches Victor is producing which
>> triggered this thread, reviewing documentation patches can be done without
>> deep knowledge of things and without taking much time. That way people who
>> have time to review the bigger, more difficult patches can actually spend
>> their time on those reviews and not worrying about patches fixing a spelling
>> mistake or adding a new test to raise test coverage.
>>
>> All of this is so that I hope one day we get to the point where all patches
>> require a review no matter who proposed the code change. Now I think we're
>> quite a ways of from being there, but that's my moonshot goal for our
>> workflow: that we have enough quality reviews coming in that we feel that
>> even patches from fellow core developers is worth requiring the extra code
>> check and disbursement of knowledge without feeling like a terrible drag on
>> productivity.
>>
>> Once the GitHub migration has occurred I'm planning to tackle our Misc/NEWS
>> problem and then automate Misc/ACKS. After that, though, I hope we can take
>> the time to have a hard look at what in our workflow prevents people from
>> making even occasional code reviews so that everyone wants to help out again
>> (and if any of this interests you then please subscribe to core-workflow).
>>
>>
>> On Fri, 20 Jan 2017 at 02:46 Victor Stinner <victor.stinner at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Raymond Hettinger used a regression that I introduced in the builtin
>>> sorted() function (in Python 3.6.0) to give me his feedback on my
>>> FASTCALL work, but also on Argument Clinic.
>>>
>>> Context: http://bugs.python.org/issue29327#msg285848
>>>
>>> Since the reported issues is wider than just FASTCALL, including how I
>>> contribute to CPython, I decided to discuss the topic with a wider
>>> audience. I continue the discussion on python-committers to get the
>>> opinion of the other core developers.
>>>
>>> Sorry for my very long answer! I tried to answer to each issues
>>> reported by Raymond.
>>>
>>> Inaccurate summary: I'm a strong supporter of "it's better to ask
>>> forgiveness than permission", whereas Raymond considers that I
>>> introduced too many regressions with my workflow.
>>>
>>>
>>> Raymond Hettinger added the comment:
>>> > A few random thoughts that may or may not be helpful:
>>> >
>>> > * We now have two seasoned developers and one new core developer that
>>> > collectively are creating many non-trivial patches to core parts of Python
>>> > at an unprecedented rate of change.  The patches are coming in much faster
>>> > than they can reasonably be reviewed and carefully considered, especially by
>>> > devs such as myself who have very limited time available.  IMO, taken as
>>> > whole, these changes are destabilizing the language.  Python is so
>>> > successful and widely adopted that we can't afford a "shit happens"
>>> > attitude.  Perhaps that works in corners of the language, infrequently used
>>> > modules, but it makes less sense when touching the critical paths that have
>>> > had slow and careful evolution over 26 years.
>>> >
>>> > * Besides the volume of patches, one other reason that reviews are hard
>>> > to come by is that they apply new APIs that I don't fully understand yet.
>>> > There are perhaps two people on the planet who could currently give
>>> > thoughtful, correct, and critical evaluation of all those patches.  Everyone
>>> > else is just watching them all fly by and hoping that something good is
>>> > happening.
>>>
>>> Since one or maybe even two years, I noticed that many of my issues
>>> were blocked by the lack of reviews. As you wrote, only few developer
>>> have the knowledge and background to be able to provide a good review
>>> (not only "tests pass, so LGTM") on my changes modifying the Python
>>> core.
>>>
>>> I also wanted to discuss this topic, but I didn't really know what to
>>> propose. Let's take this opportunity to explain how I contribute to
>>> CPython, especially how I decide to wait for a review or not.
>>>
>>> For each patch that I write, I estimate the risk of regression. You
>>> may know that any regression is something unexpected, so such
>>> estimation is tricky. Here is my heuristic:
>>>
>>> (*) if the patch is trivial (short, non controversal), I push it
>>> immediatly.
>>>
>>>
>>> (*) If I'm less confident, I open an issue and attach the patch. I
>>> wait at least one day before pushing.
>>>
>>> It's strange, but the process of opening an issue and attaching the
>>> patch usually helps to review the code myself (find bugs, or more
>>> generally enhance the patch). Maybe because it forces me to review the
>>> change one more time?
>>>
>>> If the change is not part of a larger patch serie, so doesn't block me
>>> to move further, I try to keep the issue open around one week.
>>>
>>> The truth is that too few of my patches get a review :-/ Maybe I
>>> should wait longer, but then it becomes harder for me to handle many
>>> patches.
>>>
>>> Maybe it's a tooling issues. Recently, I started to use local branches
>>> in a Git repository. It helps a lot of work on parallel on large
>>> changes. Before, I only worked in a single directory (default/, the
>>> default Mercurial branch) and applied/reverted patches everytime. It's
>>> painful, especially when I have to use multiple computers, download
>>> again publshed patches, etc. Maybe it will run smoother once CPython
>>> will move to Git and GitHub.
>>>
>>> By the way, it's painful to squash a long patch serie into a giant
>>> patch, much harder to review, where changes don't make sense at all at
>>> the first look. Again, a better reviewing tool supporting patch series
>>> (GitHub) will help here too.
>>>
>>> Not supporting patch series in our reviewing tool also explains why I
>>> prefer to push than having to wait for a review. Rebasing manually
>>> long patch series stored as giant .patch files is complicated.
>>>
>>>
>>> (*) If the change changes an API or changes a core component, I wait
>>> for at least one review from a core reviewer. Sometimes, I even send
>>> an email to python-dev. Again, sometimes I don't get any feedback on
>>> the patch nor the email after two weeks :-/ At least, I tried :-)
>>> Usually, I get feedback in less than one week, or no feedback at all.
>>> I understand that nobody understands my change or nobody cares :-)
>>>
>>> I totally understand that most core developers have a little amount of
>>> time available to contribute to Python. I'm trying to find a
>>> compromise between the risk of introducing regressions and being stuck
>>> in my work. This email might help me to adjust my workflow.
>>>
>>> By the way, I'm trying to always run the full test suite (./python -m
>>> test -rW -j0) before pushing any change. If I suspect that I may have
>>> introduced reference leaks, I also run "./python -m test -R 3:3 ..."
>>> on the tests related to the modified code to check for
>>> memory/reference leaks.
>>>
>>>
>>> > * One other reason for the lack of review comments in the enthusiasm and
>>> > fervor surrounding the patches.  I feel like there is a cost of questioning
>>> > whether the patches should be done or how they are done, like I am burning
>>> > little karma every time.  Sometimes it feels safest and most cordial to just
>>> > say nothing and let you make hundreds of semi-reviewed changes to just about
>>> > every critical part of the language.
>>>
>>> "semi-reviewed". Let me be more accurate: yeah, I do push a lot of
>>> changes which were not reviewed by anyone (see above).
>>>
>>>
>>> > * Historically, if there was creator or maintainer of the code who was
>>> > still active, that person would always be consulted and have a final say on
>>> > whether a change should be applied.  Now, we have code constantly being
>>> > changed without consulting the original author (for example, the recent and
>>> > catastrophic random initialization bug was due to application of a patch
>>> > without consulting the author of _randommodule.c and the maintainer of
>>> > random.py, or this change to sorted(), or the changes to decimal, etc).
>>>
>>> What do you mean by "author"? As you wrote, Python is now 26 years
>>> old, so it had a very long history, and each file has a very long list
>>> of "authors". I guess that you mean more a "maintainer".
>>>
>>> My problem is that I'm not aware of any explicit list of maintainers.
>>> I didn't know that you were the maintainer of the random module before
>>> you told me that at the Facebook sprint last september. I didn't
>>> expect that the random module had a maintainer, I thought that any
>>> core developer would be allowed to modify the code.
>>>
>>> Moreover, since I open an issue for most of my changes, it gives an
>>> opportunity to maintainers to review changes. Maybe we need more
>>> components in the bug tracker to notify maintainers of pending
>>> changes?
>>>
>>>
>>> You mentionned 3 different changes, let me reply.
>>>
>>>
>>> (1) The random change: http://bugs.python.org/issue29085
>>>
>>> I introduced a regression in random.Random.seed(): a typo in the C
>>> code has the consequence that the current time and process identifier
>>> is used, instead of os.urandom(16), to initialize the Mersenne Twister
>>> RNG.
>>>
>>> IMHO the regression is not "catastrophic". Only few developers
>>> instanciate random.Random themself, random.Random must not be used for
>>> security, etc. I let others decide if this bug was catastrophic or
>>> not.
>>>
>>>
>>> Since we are talking about the development process, let me see how the
>>> change was made.
>>>
>>> Context: The PEP 524 has a long and painful history... Something like
>>> more than 500 messages were sent on the bug tracker and python-dev,
>>> and nobody was listening to each others, two security experts
>>> "rage-quitted" Python because of this mess... I decided to try to fix
>>> this issue in a constructive way, so I wrote a PEP. Nick wrote a
>>> different PEP, since it was clear that it was possible to handle
>>> security in two different incompatible ways. A mailing list was even
>>> created just to discuss this bug! A mailing list just for a bug gives
>>> an idea of the size of the mess :-)
>>>
>>> Well, about the change itself, it was done in
>>> http://bugs.python.org/issue27776
>>>
>>> The patch was available for review during 19 days
>>> (2016-08-18-2016-09-06) and was reviewed by Nick Coghlan. Since Nick
>>> wrote a similar PEP, I trusted him to be able to review my change.
>>> (Well, anyway I already trust all core developers, but I mean that I
>>> was trusting him even more than usual :-))
>>>
>>> Since the change has a big impact on security, I had prefer to get a
>>> review of more developers, especially our security experts... but as I
>>> wrote, two security experts "rage- quitted". Again, this PEP has a
>>> long and sad story :-/
>>>
>>> Note: you say that you are the maintainer of the random module, but I
>>> don't recall having see you in any recent discussions and issues
>>> related to os.urandom(), whereas a lot of enhancements and changes
>>> were done last 2 years. I made many changes to support new OS
>>> functions like getentropy() an getrandom().
>>>
>>>
>>> Oooookay, let's see the second change, "this change to sorted()",
>>> http://bugs.python.org/issue29327
>>>
>>> (2) I introduced a bug in sorted(), last August:
>>> https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/15eab21bf934/
>>>
>>> Calling sorted(iterable=[]) does crash. To be honest, I didn't imagine
>>> that anyone would pass the iterable by keyword, but Serhiy is very
>>> good to spot bugs in corner cases :-)
>>>
>>> IMHO the regression is subtle.
>>>
>>> When I optimized the code to use FASTCALL, I replaced
>>> PyTuple_GetSlice(args, 1, argc) with &PyTuple_GET_ITEM(args, 1). I
>>> checked that all tests passed, so it looks ok to me.
>>>
>>> I didn't imagine that anyone would call sorted(iterable=[]), so I
>>> didn't notice that PyTuple_GetSlice() can create an empty tuple.
>>>
>>> The previous code was wrong since sorted() accepted iterable as a
>>> keyword, whereas sort.list() doesn't.
>>>
>>> So well, I let you guess if a review would have spot this bug in the
>>> large change.
>>>
>>>
>>> (3) Recently, I ran sed to replace code patterns to use faster ways to
>>> call functions:
>>> https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/54a89144ee1d
>>>
>>> "Replace PyObject_CallObject(callable, NULL) with
>>> _PyObject_CallNoArg(callable)"
>>>
>>> I recalled that I modified the _decimal module and that Stefan Krah
>>> complained, because he wants to have the same code base on Python 3.5,
>>> 3.6 and 3.7. He also mentionned an external test suite which was
>>> broken by recent _decimal changes (not sure if my specific change was
>>> in cause or not), but I wasn't aware of it.
>>>
>>> To be honest, I didn't even notice that I modified _decimal when I ran
>>> sed on all .c files. Since the change was straightforward and (IMHO)
>>> made the code more readable, I didn't even wait for a review if I
>>> recall correctly.
>>>
>>> Stefan and me handled this issue privately (he reverted my change),
>>> I'm not sure that it's worth it to say more about this "issue" (or
>>> even "non-issue").
>>>
>>> To be clear, I don't consider that my change introduced a regression.
>>>
>>>
>>> > * In general, Guido has been opposed to sweeping changes across the code
>>> > base for only tiny benefits.  Of late, that rule seems to have been lost.
>>> >
>>> > * The benefits of FASTCALL mainly apply to fine grained functions which
>>> > only do a little work and tend to be called frequently in loops.  For
>>> > functions such as sorted(), the calling overhead is dominated by the cost of
>>> > actually doing the sort.  For sorted(), FASTCALL is truly irrelevant and
>>> > likely wasn't worth the complexity, or the actual bug, or any of the time
>>> > we've now put in it.  There was no actual problem being solved, just a
>>> > desire to broadly apply new optimizations.
>>>
>>> Ok, first, you qualify my FASTCALL changes as code churn. So let me
>>> show an example with sorted():
>>> https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/b34d2ef5c412
>>>
>>> Can you elaborate how such change increases the complexity?
>>>
>>>
>>> Second, "no actual problem being solved"
>>>
>>> Since the goal of FASTCALL is to optimize Python, I guess that you
>>> consider that the speedup doesn't justify the change. I gave numbers
>>> in the issue #29327:
>>>
>>> Microbenchmark on sorted() on Python 3.7 compared to 3.5 (before
>>> FASTCALL):
>>> ---
>>> haypo at smithers$ ./python -m perf timeit 'seq=list(range(10))'
>>> 'sorted(seq)' --compare-to=../3.5/python -v
>>> Median +- std dev: [3.5] 1.07 us +- 0.06 us -> [3.7] 958 ns +- 15 ns:
>>> 1.12x faster (-11%)
>>>
>>> haypo at smithers$ ./python -m perf timeit 'seq=list(range(10)); k=lambda
>>> x:x' 'sorted(seq, key=k)' --compare-to=../3.5/python -v
>>> Median +- std dev: [3.5] 3.34 us +- 0.07 us -> [3.7] 2.66 us +- 0.05
>>> us: 1.26x faster (-21%)
>>> ---
>>>
>>> IMHO such speedup is significant even on a microbenchmark. Can you
>>> elaborate what are your criteria to decide if an optimization is worth
>>> it?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> > * Historically, we've relied on core developers showing restraint.  Not
>>> > every idea that pops into their head is immediately turned into a patch
>>> > accompanied by pressure to apply it.  Devs tended to restrict themselves to
>>> > parts of the code they knew best through long and careful study rather
>>> > sweeping through modules and altering other people's carefully crafted code.
>>>
>>> Should I understand that I should restrict myself to some files? Or
>>> not touch some specific parts of Python, like... "your" code like
>>> random, itertools and collections modules?
>>>
>>> I replied to the 3 issues you mentioned previously and explained how I
>>> contribute to Python.
>>>
>>>
>>> > * FWIW, I applaud your efforts to reduce call overhead -- that has long
>>> > been a sore spot for the language.
>>> >
>>> > * Guido has long opposed optimizations that increase risk of bugs,
>>> > introduce complexity, or that affect long-term maintainability.   In some
>>> > places, it looks like FASTCALL is increasing the complexity (replacing
>>> > something simple and well-understood with a wordier, more intricate API that
>>> > I don't yet fully understand and will affect my ability to maintain the
>>> > surrounding code).
>>>
>>> I'm sorry, I didn't spent much time on explaing the FASTCALL design
>>> nor documenting my changes. It's partially deliberate to make
>>> everything related to FASTCALL private. Since it's a huge project
>>> modifying a lot of code, I wanted to wait until the APIs and the code
>>> stop moving too fast to take time to explain my work and document it.
>>>
>>> If you have specific questions, please go ahead.
>>>
>>>
>>> Shortest summary:
>>>
>>> * FASTCALL replaces (args: tuple, kwargs: optional dict) with (args: C
>>> array, nargs: int, kwnames: tuple of keyword keys). It's a new calling
>>> convention which allows to avoid a temporary tuple to pass positional
>>> arguments and avoids temporary dictionary to pass keyworkd arguments.
>>>
>>> * To use FASTCALL, C functions should be converted to the new
>>> METH_FASTCALL calling convention
>>>
>>> * PyObject_Call() can replaced with _PyObject_FastCallKeywords() or
>>> _PyObject_FastCallDict() (when we still get kwargs as a dict) in such
>>> conversion
>>>
>>> * Many existing C functions were optimized internally to use FASCALL,
>>> so even if you don't modify your code, you will benefit of it
>>> (speedup). Typical example: PyFunction_CallFunctionObjArgs().
>>>
>>>
>>> The most massive change were purely internal and don't affect the most
>>> famous C APIs at all. In some cases, to fully benefit of FASTCALL,
>>> code should be modified. I'm trying to restrict such changes to Python
>>> internals, especially the most used functions.
>>>
>>> I expected that the required changes were straightforward enough, it
>>> looks like I was wrong, but I don't recall anyone, before you
>>> recently, asking for an explanation.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> > * It was no long ago that you fought tooth-and-nail against a single
>>> > line patch optimization I submitted.  The code was clearly correct and had a
>>> > simple disassembly to prove its benefit.  Your opposition was based on "it
>>> > increases the complexity of the code, introduces a maintenance cost, and
>>> > increases the risk of bugs".  In the end, your opposition killed the patch.
>>> > But now, the AC and FASTCALL patches don't seem to mind any of these
>>> > considerations.
>>>
>>> Context: http://bugs.python.org/issue26201
>>>
>>> It seems like we need more _explicit_ rules to decide if an
>>> optimization is worth it or not. For me, the de facto standard request
>>> for an optimization is to prove it with a benchmark. I requested a
>>> benchmark, but you refused to provide it.
>>>
>>> So I ran my own benchmark and saw that your change made the modified
>>> code (PyList_Append()) 6% slower. I'm not sure that my bencmark was
>>> correct, but it was a first step to take a decision.
>>>
>>>
>>> To come back to FASTCALL, your point is that it doesn't provide any
>>> speedup.
>>>
>>> In most FASTCALL issues that I opened, I provide a script to reproduce
>>> my benchmark and the benchmark results. The speedup is usually betwen
>>> 10% and 20% faster.
>>>
>>> Should I understand that 6% slower is ok, whereas 10-20% faster is not
>>> good? Can you please elaborate?
>>>
>>>
>>> > * AC is supposed to be a CPython-only concept.  But along the way APIs
>>> > are being changed without discussion.  I don't mind that sorted() now
>>> > exposes *iterable* as a keyword argument, but it was originally left out on
>>> > purpose (Tim opined that code would look worse with iterable as a keyword
>>> > argument).  That decision was reversed unilaterally without consulting the
>>> > author and without a test.  Also as AC is being applied, the variable names
>>> > are being changed.  I never really liked the "mp" that used in dicts and
>>> > prefer the use of "self" better, but it is a gratuitous change that
>>> > unilaterally reverses the decisions of the authors and makes the code not
>>> > match any of the surrounding code that uses the prior conventions.
>>>
>>> Ah, at least I concur with you on one point :-) Changes to convert
>>> functions to AC must not change the API (type of arguments: positional
>>> only/keyword/..., default values, etc.) nor provide a worse docstring.
>>>
>>> There is an active on-going work to enhance AC to fix issues that you
>>> reported, like the default value of positional-only parameters which
>>> should not be rendered in the function signature (I created the issue
>>> #29299 with a patch). Serhiy is also working on implementing the last
>>> major missing feature of AC: support *args and **kwargs parameters
>>> (issue #20291).
>>>
>>> FYI I wasn't involved in AC changes, I only started to look at AC
>>> recently (1 or 2 months ago). Again, I agree that these changes should
>>> be carefully reviewed, which is an hard task since required changes
>>> are usually large and move a lot of code. We need more eyes to look at
>>> these changes!
>>>
>>> For the specific case of sorted(), the name of first parameter is
>>> already documented in the docstring and documentation in Python 2.7:
>>> "iterable". So I guess that you mean that it is now possible to use it
>>> as a keyword argument. Well, see the issue #29327 for the long story.
>>> This issue is a regression, it was already fixed, and I didn't
>>> introduce the API change.
>>>
>>>
>>> Oh by the way, when I read your comment, I understand that I'm
>>> responsible of all regressions. It's true that I introduced
>>> regressions, that's where I said "shit happens" (or more politically
>>> correct: "it's better to ask forgiveness than permission" ;-)). Since
>>> I'm one of the most active contributor in CPython, I'm not surprised
>>> of being the one who introduce many (most?) regressions :-) I'm trying
>>> to review my changes multiple times, test corner cases, etc. But I'm
>>> not perfect.
>>>
>>> Sadly, to show its full power, FASTCALL requires changes at many
>>> levels of the code. It requires to change at lot of code, but I
>>> understood that core developers approved the whole project. Maybe I
>>> was wrong? At least, I asked for permissions multiple changes,
>>> especially at the start.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> > * FWIW, the claim that the help is much better is specious.  AFAICT,
>>> > there has never been the slightest problem with "sorted(iterable, key=None,
>>> > reverse=False) --> new sorted list" which has been clear since the day it
>>> > was released.   It is some of the new strings the are causing problems with
>>> > users (my students frequently are tripped-up by the / notation for example;
>>> > no one seems to be able to intuit what it means without it being explained
>>> > first).
>>>
>>> Good news, it seems like you have a good experience in API design,
>>> documentation, etc. Join the "Argument Clinic" project to help us to
>>> enhance docstrings, function signatures and documentation ;-)
>>>
>>> See the good part of the AC on-going work: it's a nice opportunity to
>>> also enhance documentation, not only provide a signature.
>>>
>>> By the way, to be honest, the main advantage of converting functions
>>> to AC is to get a signature. The signature is visible in docstrings
>>> which is nice, but it is also very useful to a wide range of tools
>>> like (IDE, static checks, etc.).
>>>
>>> Conversion to FASTCALL is more a nice effect. At least, it is a good
>>> motivation for me to convert mor and more code to AC :-)
>>>
>>> AC moves docstring closer to the list of parameters. IHMO it makes the
>>> C code simpler to read and understand. It also removes the boring code
>>> responsible to "parse" arguments, so it makes the code shorter. But
>>> well, this is just my opinion.
>>>
>>>
>>> > * FWIW, I'm trying to be constructive and contribute where I can, but
>>> > frankly I can't keep up with the volume of churn.   Having seen bugs being
>>> > introduced, it is not inappropriate to ask another dev to please be careful,
>>> > especially when that dev has been prolific to an unprecedented degree and
>>> > altering core parts of the language for function calls, to new opcodes, the
>>> > memory allocators, etc.  Very few people on the planet are competent to
>>> > review these changes, make reasonable assessments about whether the
>>> > complexity and churn are worth it.  An fewer still have the time to keep up
>>> > with the volume of changes.
>>>
>>>
>>> Hum, I wasn't involved in bytecode changes.
>>>
>>> Well, I reviewed the very good work of Demur Rumed. I recall that you
>>> worked on a similar area, trying to fetch bytecode by 16-bit instead
>>> of 8-bit. Demur proposed a good design and I recall that the design
>>> was approved.
>>>
>>> I helped a little bit on the implementation and I pushed the final
>>> change, but all credits go to Demur and Serhiy Storshaka! By the way,
>>> Serhiy made further efficient enhancements in the bytecode of
>>> CALL_FUNCTION instructions.
>>>
>>>
>>> About memory allocations, I guess that you are referring to my change
>>> on PyMem_Malloc() allocator. I discussed the issue on python-dev and
>>> waited for approval of my peers before pushing anything, since I know
>>> well that it's a critical part of Python:
>>> https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2016-March/143467.html
>>>
>>> I provide all data requested by Marc Andre Lemburg (test the change
>>> with common projects, Django, Pillow, numpy) and made further changes
>>> (PYTHONMALLOC=debug tool) to help to handle this backward incompatible
>>> change (GIL is now required to call PyMem_Malloc).
>>>
>>> Hopefully, it seems like nobody noticed this subtle change (GIL now
>>> requied): I didn't see any bug report. By the way, I fixed a misused
>>> PyMem_Mem() in numpy.
>>>
>>>
>>> > * Please do continue your efforts to improve the language, but also
>>> > please moderate the rate of change, mitigate the addition complexity, value
>>> > stability over micro-optimizations, consult the authors and maintainers of
>>> > code, take special care without code that hasn't been reviewed because that
>>> > lacks a safety net, and remember that newer devs may be taking cues from you
>>> > (do you want them making extensive changes to long existing stable code
>>> > without consulting the authors and with weak LGTM reviews?)
>>>
>>> Ok, I will do it.
>>>
>>> Thank you for you feedback Raymond. I hope that my email helps you to
>>> understand how I work and how I take my decisions.
>>>
>>> Victor
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> python-committers mailing list
>>> python-committers at python.org
>>> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-committers
>>> Code of Conduct: https://www.python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> python-committers mailing list
>> python-committers at python.org
>> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-committers
>> Code of Conduct: https://www.python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
> _______________________________________________
> python-committers mailing list
> python-committers at python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-committers
> Code of Conduct: https://www.python.org/psf/codeofconduct/