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by pfalcon 1953 days ago
Interested in block-level scoping in Python? Please post on the python-ideas mailing list. Thanks.
3 comments

No, not interested in block-level scoping in Python. Why on earth would I ask a programming language I rely on for getting important work done to introduce so massive a breaking change as changing its scoping style?

"I don't think feature X is a good fit for Python because it interacts poorly with existing Python features Y and Z" is not a tacit statement of support for changing features Y and Z. It's a statement that means exactly what it says.

Like I alluded to in my grandparent post, I use other languages that are not Python, and like their features, too. That does not necessarily mean I want all my favorite features from those pulled into Python. Nor do I want my favorite features from Python pulled into other languages.

The best analogy I can think of is a college friend once developed this sort of transitive theory of food that went, "If A tastes good with B, and B tastes good with C, then A must taste good with C." This resulted in a number of questionable concoctions, like serving cottage cheese on top of chocolate cake because they both taste good with strawberries.

Actually, the opposite. Call me an old crank but I feel like Python should stay Python and not try to (badly) tack on ideas from ML.
For my part, as I maintain some complex academic research software, I would be much more interested in continuing support for Python 2, and more comprehensive numerical, math and vector libraries for Racket.