On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 4:01 AM, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: > On Fri, 01 Apr 2011 18:22:01 -0700, geremy condra wrote: > [...] >>>> I don't have a horse in this race, but I do wonder how much of Python >>>> could actually survive this test. My first (uneducated) guess is "not >>>> very much"- we would almost certainly lose large pieces of the string >>>> API and other builtins, and I have no doubt at all that a really >>>> significant chunk of the standard library would vanish as well. In >>>> fact, looking at the data I took from PyPI a while back, it's pretty >>>> clear that Python's feature set would look very different overall if >>>> we applied this test to everything. >>> >>> >>> I don't understand what you mean by "this test". >> >> I mean testing whether a feature should be in Python based on whether it >> can meet some undefined standard of popularity if implemented as a >> third-party module or extension. > [...] >> Granted, but I think the implication is clear: that only those features >> which could be successful if implemented and distributed by a third >> party should be in Python. > > Ah, gotcha. > > I think you're reading too much into what I said -- I wasn't implying > that community support is the only acceptable reason for the existence of > features in Python. > > Development of Python is not a democracy, it is a meritocracy. It is > designed by a small team of language developers, starting with Guido van > Rossum. Those who do the work decide what goes in, based on whatever > combination of factors they choose:
I think we're talking at cross purposes. The point I'm making is that there are lots of issues where popularity as a third party module isn't really a viable test for whether a feature is sufficiently awesome to be in core python. As part of determining whether I thought it was appropriate in this case I essentially just asked myself whether any of the really good and necessary parts of Python would fail to be readmitted under similar circumstances, and I think the answer is that very few would come back in. To me, that indicates that this isn't the right way to address this issue, although I admit that I lack any solid proof to base that conclusion on. Geremy Condra -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list