[Python-Dev] Time for a change of random number generator? (original) (raw)

Stephen J. Turnbull stephen at xemacs.org
Thu Feb 11 22:19:15 EST 2016

Steven D'Aprano writes:

Peters has an opinion?) but if we do change, I'd like to see the existing random.Random moved to random.MT_Random for backwards compatibility and compatibility with other software which uses MT. Not necessarily saying that we have to keep it around forever (after all, we did dump the Wichmann-Hill PRNG some time ago) but we ought to keep it for at least a couple of releases.

I think we should keep it around forever. Even my slowest colleagues are learning that they should record their seeds and PRNG algorithms for reproducibility's sake. :-) For that matter, restore Wichmann-Hill. Both should be clearly marked as "use only for reproducing previous bitstreams" (eg, in a package random.deprecated_generators).

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list