4 ms·

This is what Python should have done.

• egeozcan 5y ago
  JavaScript had something close, valid on the context level, with "use strict" (which is, I guess, borrowed from Perl), and I still don't understand why they don't repeat that for newer features that would be much simpler if they broke backwards compatibility.
  • Macha 5y ago
    Didn't this end up in every Perl file having a ton of different "use" statements at the top for features that became expected?
    • egeozcan 5y ago
      Perl model of enabling features individually was indeed too much, I was suggesting a language-level switch.
• winstonewert 5y ago
  This approach only works for syntax level changes, it wouldn't have helped the problematic changes in Python 2 -> 3.
  • cyphar 5y ago
    Well, the ability to specify python version by module would've made migration much easier for everyone (in theory). But you're quite right that it wouldn't by itself be a solution -- it would also have required additional complexity to handle interoperability when calling between python versions, both in the runtime and the programs themselves (even a sufficiently smart compiler can't figure out what string encoding a python2 function expects).