On Sun, Apr 3, 2016 at 4:43 PM, Stephen Hansen <me+pyt...@ixokai.io> wrote: > The stdlib exists as a bastion of stability above all else. Its > standards aren't a reason to make a change (or, not to make a change, > either). That doesn't mean its not useful to look at the standard > library, but you should not enshrine it as the example of good or > idiomatic code to measure decisions against. Most code exists outside > the stdlib.
Expanding on this: There have been times when the stdlib has been cited in proposals, such as the introduction of a new keyword. Out of five plausible words, two have significant use in the stdlib, another has a couple of uses, and two more have no references at all. Specific example from PEP 359 [1]; the same line of analysis has also been used elsewhere. Also, a proposed new syntax can attempt to justify its benefit by taking examples from the stdlib, not because they will necessarily be changed, but simply because it's a good-sized codebase that all Python devs and tinkerers will have easy access to. PEP 463 [2] demonstrates this. Similarly, but in reverse: The stdlib can provide examples showing how a proposal will _break_ existing code, and how it should be fixed; PEP 479 [3] has a few examples, some from the stdlib, some hypothetical. In each case, the stdlib is being treated as simply "a body of Python code", and one which has a measure of neutrality (we're not favouring web app developers by looking at the Django source code, or numeric computational work by looking at Pandas, or anything like that), and if anything, it's indicative of older codebases rather than newer ones, which is usually good for proposals that need to be conservative. So in the case of range() usage, I would say that stdlib usage showing "x in range(...)" would be highly significant, but *absence* of such usage is not. ChrisA [1] https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0359/#keyword [2] https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0463/#example-usage [3] https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0479/#examples-of-breakage -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
