[Python-Dev] Re: Python 2.0 and Stackless (original) (raw)

Jeremy Hylton jeremy@alum.mit.edu
Sun, 6 Aug 2000 14:54:56 -0400

Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> writes:

Just van Rossum <just@letterror.com>:

Christian has done an amazing piece of work, and he's gotten much praise from the community. I mean, if you are looking for a killer feature to distinguish 1.6 from 2.0, I'd know where to look... I must say I agree. Something pretty similar to Stackless Python is going to have to happen anyway for the language to make its next major advance in capability -- generators, co-routining, and continuations. I also agree that this is a more important debate, and a harder set of decisions, than the PEPs. Which means we should start paying attention to it now.

The PEPs exist as a way to formalize important debates and hard decisions. Without a PEP that offers a formal description of the changes, it is hard to have a reasonable debate. I would not be comfortable with the specification for any feature from stackless being the implementation.

Given the current release schedule for Python 2.0, I don't see any possibility of getting a PEP accepted in time. The schedule, from PEP 200, is:

Tentative Release Schedule
    Aug. 14: All 2.0 PEPs finished / feature freeze
    Aug. 28: 2.0 beta 1
    Sep. 29: 2.0 final

Jeremy