[Python-Dev] clarification on PEP 3124 status (original) (raw)

Paul Moore p.f.moore at gmail.com
Sun Sep 13 16:54:20 CEST 2009

2009/9/13 Darren Dale <dsdale24 at gmail.com>:

If Phillip doesn't respond here, you may want to ask him directly. My impression is that it is deferred because nobody is pursuing it actively (including Phillip Eby). It's common for a PEP to be in that state for several years, "deferred" then is an indication that readers shouldn't expect a resolution in short term. That is why I asked, I wondered if it is being actively considered and pursued, or if it had been deferred or worse abandoned.

That said: my personal feeling is that this PEP is way too large, and should be broken into seperate pieces of functionality that can be considered independently. There is a lot of stuff in it that isn't strictly necessary to provide the feature listed in the rationale. It would be nice to have a suitable foundation upon which more elaborate third party dispatchers could build. The potential generic functions have in a project like numpy are pretty exciting.

You may also be interested in http://bugs.python.org/issue5135 which is a (much) simpler attempt to introduce generic functions into the standard library.

Generally, these things get stalled because the core developers don't have sufficient interest in the topic to do anything directly, and the arguments in favour aren't compelling enough to make a difference. Maybe the benefits numpy would get would help the case.

Paul.

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