PEP praise (was RE: [Python-Dev] Lockstep iteration (original) (raw)

Tim Peters tim_one@email.msn.com
Thu, 10 Aug 2000 20:44:08 -0400

[Ka-Ping Yee]

... Surely a PEP isn't required for a couple of built-in functions that are simple and well understood? You can just call thumbs-up or thumbs-down and be done with it.

Only half of that is true, and even then only partially: if the verdict is thumbs-up, almost cool, except that newcomers delight in pestering "but how come it wasn't done my way instead?". You did a bit of that yourself in your day, you know . We're hoping the stream of newcomers never ends, but the group of old-timers willing and able to take an hour or two to explain the past in detail is actually dwindling (heck, you can count the Python-Dev members chipping in on Python-Help with a couple of fingers, and if anything fewer still active on c.l.py).

If it's thumbs-down, in the absence of a PEP it's much worse: it will just come back again, and again, and again, and again. The sheer repetition in these endlessly recycled arguments all but guarantees that most old-timers ignore these threads completely.

A prime purpose of the PEPs is to be the community's collective memory, pro or con, so I don't have to be . You surely can't believe this is the first time these particular functions have been pushed for core adoption!? If not, why do we need to have the same arguments all over again? It's not because we're assholes, and neither because there's anything truly new here, it's simply because a mailing list has no coherent memory.

Not so much as a comma gets changed in an ANSI or ISO std without an elaborate pile of proposal paperwork and formal reviews. PEPs are a very lightweight mechanism compared to that. And it would take you less time to write a PEP for this than I alone spent reading the 21 msgs waiting for me in this thread today. Multiply the savings by billions .

world-domination-has-some-scary-aspects-ly y'rs - tim