That's besides the point. I don't want to muck about with tools on my Python scripts.
I have sometimes not run a Python script for a few years, and then when I need it, it stopped working and I need to track down what changed/broke or run some tool or whatnot. I don't keep track of the latest greatest Python changes – like most Python programmers it's not my "day job" to write Python code so I now need to track what changed between "the Python version I used about 3 years ago, whatever that was" and now. It's pretty annoying.
And that's assuming said tool will be fool-proof. Never mind of course that all my dependencies (if any) will need updating too.
What will happen in practice is that people will write "except Exception:" rather than "except:" and do nothing different. Basically nothing will change.
Meanwhile, I have C and Go programs that have worked without modification for about 10 years. Not that nothing ever breaks in C or Go, but it's the exception (hah!) rather than the rule.
> like most Python programmers it's not my "day job" to write Python code
I’d love to know whether that’s true, and to what extreme. I believe you’re right - that people using Python for a few hours a week (or less) greatly outnumber software developers using it as their primary language.
I think that’s a real issue for the evolution of Python, because updates to the language design (e.g. the makeup of the Steering Council) come almost entirely from the second group.
> I think that’s a real issue for the evolution of Python, because updates to the language design (e.g. the makeup of the Steering Council) come almost entirely from the second group.
Yes I agree, and it's disappointing to see some take such a narrow view of things.
A big part of maintaining and evolving a language is saying "no" a lot. There are a lot of people with ideas, almost always reasoned from their own use-case. That's okay, everyone does that to some degree, but there almost always trade-offs and such to consider.
Your job as Steering Council or Core Dev or BFDL or whatever governance you have is to consider all use cases and make a balanced decision. Reading that thread, some do. But unfortunately others don't.
Even for Python 3, Guido spent most of his time saying "no" to proposals. There were a lot of pretty wild ideas for Python 3000.
I have sometimes not run a Python script for a few years, and then when I need it, it stopped working and I need to track down what changed/broke or run some tool or whatnot. I don't keep track of the latest greatest Python changes – like most Python programmers it's not my "day job" to write Python code so I now need to track what changed between "the Python version I used about 3 years ago, whatever that was" and now. It's pretty annoying.
And that's assuming said tool will be fool-proof. Never mind of course that all my dependencies (if any) will need updating too.
What will happen in practice is that people will write "except Exception:" rather than "except:" and do nothing different. Basically nothing will change.
Meanwhile, I have C and Go programs that have worked without modification for about 10 years. Not that nothing ever breaks in C or Go, but it's the exception (hah!) rather than the rule.