[Python-Dev] Proposal to revert r54204 (splitext change) (original) (raw)

glyph at divmod.com glyph at divmod.com
Thu Mar 15 20:17:49 CET 2007

On 05:51 pm, pje at telecommunity.com wrote:

At 07:45 AM 3/15/2007 +0100, Martin v. Löwis wrote:

I apparently took the same position that you now take back then, whereas I'm now leaning towards (or going beyond) the position Tim had back then, who wrote "BTW, if it weren't for the code breakage, I'd be in favor of doing this." If it weren't for the code breakage, I'd be in favor too. That's not the point. The point is that how can Python be stable as a language if precedents can be reversed without a migration plan, just because somebody changes their mind? In another five years, will you change your mind again, and decide to put this back the way it was?

Hear, hear. Python is not stable as a language. I have Java programs that I wrote almost ten years ago which still run perfectly on the latest runtime. There is python software I wrote two years ago which doesn't work right on 2.5, and some of the Python stuff contemporary with that Java code won't even import.

Speaking as a business person, that seems to me... unwise. When I found out that this change had been checked in despite all the opposition, my gut reaction was, "I guess I can't rely on Python any more", despite 10 years of working with it, developing open source software with it, and contributing to its development. Because from a business perspective, this sort of flip-flopping means that moving from one "minor" Python version to another is potentially very costly.

And indeed it is. Python's advantages in terms of rapidity of development have, thus far, made up the difference for me, but it is threatening to become a close thing. This is a severe problem and something needs to be done about it.

But as you are so fond of pointing out, there is no "many people". There are only individual people. That a majority want it one way, means that there is a minority who want it another. If next year, it becomes more popular to have it the other way, will we switch again? If a majority of people want braces and required type declarations, will we add them?

And, in fact, there is not even a majority. There is a perception of a majority. There isn't even a perception of a majority of Python users, but a perception of a majority of python-dev readers, who are almost by definition less risk-averse when it comes to language change than anyone else!

If we actually care about majorities, let's set up a voting application and allow Python users to vote on each and every feature, and publicize it each time such a debate comes up. Here, I'll get it started:

http://jyte.com/cl/python-should-have-a-strict-backward-compatibility- policy-to-guide-its-development

According to that highly scientific study, at this point in time, "Nobody disagrees" :). (One in favor, zero against.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/attachments/20070315/c86a6948/attachment.html

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