Proposal: Moratorium on Python language changes [LWN.net]

Proposal: Moratorium on Python language changes

Posted Oct 22, 2009 3:44 UTC (Thu) by sergey (guest, #31763)
In reply to: Proposal: Moratorium on Python language changes by mhelsley
Parent article: Proposal: Moratorium on Python language changes

> I thought they were mainly looking to capitalize on the performance work going into highly-tuned VMs.

Right now that doesn't seem to be the case: both Jython and IronPython appear to be slower (I'm certain about Jython, IronPython data is harder to find). I think the motivation is to access an underlying run-time library and some VM features, like memory management and threading support, using a modern and more fully-featured language. Java and C# are catching up and growing the desired features, C# 4.0 is a good example, but they're seriously behind.

> How does constantly changing the language make things easier for these folks?

They focus on a specific version (e.g. IronPython 2.6 aims at parity with Python 2.6), and /that/ target, once set, is hardly moving. Moreover, existing features are not really changing that much (Python has good backward compatibility discipline within major versions), but new features are being added, which is a different thing.

> How many language features of C have been deprecated over how many years? How does python compare?

I didn't use Python 1.x so I can't tell from personal experience, but I know projects that baselined their code on 1.5 and it worked well into 2.2 and later.

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Proposal: Moratorium on Python language changes

Posted Oct 23, 2009 12:26 UTC (Fri) by tseaver (subscriber, #1544) [Link]

Nearly everything I learned on Python 1.4 still works in Python 2.6, with the exception of raising strings as exceptions.

I don't recognize any of the Jython / IronPython folks as posting here, but they seem to be quite pleased by the idea of the moratorium: in fact, I see no significant opposition, with the exception of a plea or two for exceptions for already-implemented features.