[Python-Dev] PEP 467 (Minor API improvements for binary sequences) - any thoughts?

[Ethan Furman]

On 02/26/2018 11:34 PM, Elias Zamaria wrote:

> Nick, I'm trying to reply to your message, but I can't figure out how.
>
> You mentioned that the PEP needs a "champion". What would that involve? How much time and effort would it take? What
> kinds of decisions would I make?

Being a PEP "champion" involves collecting lots of data, sorting it, making decisions about API design, posting about 
those decisions along with the pros and cons, listening to more feedback, and continuing until there is general 
agreement about the PEP.  After that a request is made to (usually) Guido to accept or reject the PEP.  If accepted, 
then the code writing stage happens.

Writing code first is not bad as a working proof-of-concept is always handy.

> The iterbytes thing in the PEP is something I was wishing for, while working on a personal project. I stumbled upon this
> PEP and decided to try to implement it myself, to learn about C and the Python internals, among other reasons.

It's a good way to go about it!

> I don't know how I would feel working on something so general, of use to so many people for lots of different purposes.
> Do I know enough about all of the use cases and what everyone wants? I am not completely against it but I'd need to
> think about it.

Part of the PEP writing process is asking for and collecting use-cases;  if possible, looking at other code projects for 
use-cases is also useful.

Time needed can vary widely depending on the subject; if I recall correctly, PEP 409 only took a few days, while PEP 435 
took several weeks.  PEP 467 has already gone through a few iterations, so hopefully not too much more time is required.

If you would like to try you'll get plenty of help from the community -- at least from those willing to go through PEP 
467 again.  ;)

At the moment, though, we're concentrating on getting v3.7.0 as bug-free as possible, so feel free to research where the 
PEP is now and go through the last discussion, but you should wait for the 3.7.0 release before actively bringing the 
PEP discussion back to python-dev.

--
~Ethan~