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[Python-Dev] PEP 469: Restoring the iterkeys/values/items() methods

Stephen J. Turnbull stephen at xemacs.org
Mon Apr 21 07:21:49 CEST 2014 
Tres Seaver writes:

 > Re-adding features to make the strategy that works less painful is
 > just acknowledging that fact.

Whether the strategy that works was anticipated is irrelevant, and the
fact that pain *would* be involved was acknowledged all the way back
to the days when "Python 3000" was still a python-dev in joke rather
than something that downstream needed to think about for the future.

The question is "how much pain", and I'm sorry, but I don't see that
the .iterthingee methods involve so much pain.  The request for
explanation and quantification seems eminently reasonable to me.

 > Mark such features as BBB-only / deprecated-but-never-to-be-removed, and
 > move on:  "practicality beats purity".

Since your statement is a first-order sentence, it's implicitly
universally quantified.  "All" is a *lot* of cruft, Tres!  Where do
*you* propose finally saying "the cruft stops here"?

Also, whatever cruft ends up being included *will* be propagated
forward in code that does *not* need it, including new code.  Most
"new" code is plagiarized to some degree, and people plagiarize not
with a critic's eye, but with an eye to "does the API have the
semantics I need when it calls that code?"

Nor do they enable deprecation notices, or read documentation if the
reused code Just Works....
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