Until recently I’ve been using Python 2.3.x almost exclusively and I thought it was about time I get more familiar with what 2.4 series has to offer. I’ve skimmed the list of new features when point zero version came out and found some things that I like (e.g sets) and some that I disliked (e.g. decorators).

So, this time I invested a bit more time to actually read and understand what was on offer and how these features came about. I still haven’t found a need or a sympathy for decorators, although I can see why some people want them. Personally, I believe they’ll more likely be a cause for less readable and harder to understand Python code than they prove to be useful.

I still think Python is a wonderful language, but gone are the days when I was looking forward to each release and goodness it brought. These days I’m afraid to look and discover another feature that helps more with keeping habits from other languages than adding something new and genuinely useful.

I like minimalism in all things and therefore see every new feature as a burden that should be more than offset by its usefulness. I’m not a language designer and hence can’t really say or tell if Python is going down the wrong track, but there is something that I find most annoying.

I’ve been thinking about languages quite a lot recently; how we use and abuse them and what impact our language proficiency has on our communications. There’s one thing I find very different with programming languages than those used for normal human interaction.

There’s very little optional about them.

It really gets my goat when a language feature is defended as being optional. You may have a choice in using a feature, but you certainly don’t get a choice in learning and understanding its use. Even if you don’t use it yourself, you’ll quite likely have to interact with somebody else’s code, which does and unlike with English, it’s not enough to just get a sense of meaning from its context. You actually have to really understand what it does and hence need to be familiar with feature itself.

It might still be worthwhile to add it, but let’s not pretend when we do that it’s completely optional.

P.S: Isn’t it amazing that after all these years, we still have a global interpreter lock? Wouldn’t it be better if we worked on removing that disgrace?