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Comment by tersers | Hacker News Reader

I get an impression that regardless of topic, it’s difficult for any decisions to be made for the future of Python? The discussion seems to always revolve around “what if?”s in not the most collaborative fashion. I wonder if what most languages need are less experts in computer science or language theory or anything technical, and more folks that can do facilitation.

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Python decision-making is rather conservative, preferring deep exploration of implications, because its a big, established language with a lot of existing use to support, and because of the 2->3 experience.

I don’t think lack of facilitation skill is an issue; its a deliberate policy choice.

Is there any production ready language that isn't conservative with its decision making?

> Is there any production ready language that isn't conservative with its decision making?

There's variations of degree, but probably not. Part of being production-ready is stability.

Isn't it a good thing that decisions which affect billions of devices are taken carefully and deliberately rather than rushed? Is there an expectation that major decisions for the future of one of the oldest and most widely deployed programming languages in the world should be easy?

The what if is a valid question I think. In my little corner of the universe, my boss is genuinely ( and the more I think about it, reasonably ) worried about introducing more dependency on Python in our daily work.

The are a lot of reasons not to introduce it, but 'what ifs' at a company like ours could be devastating. I still think proper precautions can be taken, but it is harder for me to say that I would just say yes if I was in his shoes.

Why do you think managers take over everything? Regardless of topic, any sufficiently large problem eventually becomes primarily a coordination problem

Personally, I’d much rather languages be designed from mathematical foundations and/or very careful theory.

There certainly are languages like that, but I think you'll find there are tradeoffs to consider. Especially in commercial software.

The ones I’m familiar with (clojure and haskell) are a joy to work with. These languages have conquered my heart!

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