No, a PEP was required because there was a lot of discussion on the API, and also non trivial choices on the implementation (pure C? pure Python? C+Python?). To

No, a PEP was required because there was a lot of discussion on the API, and also non trivial choices on the implementation (pure C? pure Python? C+Python?). To have an idea of the amount of discussion, read the "Rejected ideas" of the PEP: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0471/#rejected-ideas https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0471/#rejected-ideas