[Python-Dev] Benchmarks why we need PEP 576/579/580

[Jeroen Demeyer]

On 2018-07-22 14:52, Stefan Behnel wrote:
> Someone has to maintain the *existing* code
> base and help newcomers to get into it and understand it.

This is an important point that people seem to be overlooking. The 
complexity and maintenance burden of PEP 580 should be compared to the 
status-quo. The existing code is complicated, yet nobody seems to find 
that a problem. But when PEP 580 makes changes to that complicated code 
(and documents some of the existing complexity), it's suddenly the fault 
of PEP 580 that the code is complicated.

I also wonder if there is a psychological difference simply because this 
is a PEP and not an issue on bugs.python.org. That might give the 
impression that it's a more serious thing somehow. Previous 
optimizations (https://bugs.python.org/issue26110 for example) were not 
done in a PEP and nobody ever mentioned that the extra complexity might 
be a problem.

Finally, in some ways, my PEP would actually be a simplification because 
it replaces several special cases by one general protocol. Admittedly, 
the general protocol that I propose is more complicated than each 
existing special case individually but the overall complexity might 
actually decrease.


Jeroen.