“Didn’t fuck it up quite as badly as Perl” is hardly a robust defense. Contrast the upgrade cycle of Apple’s Swift. Same amount of user howling, of course, yet

“Didn’t fuck it up quite as badly as Perl” is hardly a robust defense. Contrast the upgrade cycle of Apple’s Swift. Same amount of user howling, of course, yet Swift has moved forward by 4 breaking releases in the time it’s taken Python to do 1. That designed their upgrade process; tooled, timelined, and taught it appropriately; and ran it to schedule. With Python there was no clear process, no clear schedule, no clear endpoint. They cared about the code but the logistics were an afterthought. They designed, implemented, and tested all their language changes; they should have designed, implemented, and tested their rollout procedures with equal rigor.