Iwan van der Kleyn wrote:
And I do sense (reading planet python/this newsgroup) a mindset or at least a tendency by the people who really matter in these discussion to keep on adding features to the syntax; to add "structure" to Python. My personal preference would be to leave the language alone for a while and to improve its infrastructure.
In all honesty this:
http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=86641
scares me too. Reminds me of Larry Wall's writings on Perl 6 that make me tune out fairly quickly. I don't have the kind of problems that the these features will solve so I can't relate to them at all.
But others might do. Especially when using python in an environment where enforcing a strict contract is important. But if python were to become overly complicated I'll find something else. Three years ago I have not not used python at all, now I'm using it for everything.
Languages should evolve with time, adapt to the needs of its users. Sometimes that means that in some areas it might feel worse. But it could also mean that the problem is with us, so it would be unfair to spend effort towards holding back this evolution just because we don't need it.
Istvan.
PS. why can't decorators solve this optional type checking problem? I clearly remember this as being one of the selling points for having decorators in the first place... -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list