[Python-Dev] cpython: Rename contextlib.ignored() to contextlib.ignore(). (original) (raw)

Raymond Hettinger raymond.hettinger at gmail.com
Wed Oct 16 09:07:16 CEST 2013

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On Oct 15, 2013, at 4:24 PM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:

this thread still epitomises everything that sucks about soul destroying, energy draining bikeshed painting that makes me wonder why I ever bother trying to make anything better.

FWIW, here's a little history:

• Last year, one of my clients suggested this feature based on code his team had been using in production.
• I thought it might be a good idea, so I scanned the standard library and some third-party modules to see how well it worked with existing examples of try/except/pass.
• I posted the proposal to the tracker over a year ago (issue 15806) along with some examples from the standard library. I also posted an egrep search so that others could evaluate it on their own code.
• Along the way, I did usability testing on some corporate Python programmers who were attending my intermediate and advance Python classes. The feedback was positive (expressive, readable, and concise).
• In February, I presented ignore() in the keynote for the U.S. Pycon. Again, the feedback was positive.
• After some refinements, the module maintainer (Nick) blessed it and the code was checked-in to the Python 3.4 codebase in early March.
• This month, I made a minor name change from ignored() to ignore().
• The next day, Antoine launched this thread and everything hit the fan.

As Nick said, this thread was just awful. I found it painful to read each day. Shoot from the hip comments were given greater weight than months of development. Neither Nick nor I were given an ounce of respect for the thought we put into this or for our long track record of good design.

The python-dev mailing list is a complex (and sometimes dysfunctional) environment. I understand that everyone on the soccer field feels a need to step-in and kick the ball to affect the outcome, but this was too much.

To each participant, it may not seem like bike-shedding, but there were almost a hundred emails in this thread just to kick around six lines of code that were checked-in seven months ago:

    @contextmanager
    def ignored(*exceptions):
        try:
            yield
        except exceptions:
            pass

Raymond

P.S. The name suppress() is not as good as ignore(), but I'm so burnt out on this thread that I just don't care anymore.

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