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Comment by chucke | Hacker News Reader

Both are true. Different camps meant that any significant change to the language was scrutinised loudly. If my memory doesn't fail me, the last significant changes from the time Guido was still in charge, and he mostly abandoned the BDFL because of backlash. Since then python has been on a constant "analysis paralysis" state, with only efforts about performance pushing through (no one complains about a faster horse).

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> If my memory doesn't fail me, the last significant changes from the time Guido was still in charge, and he mostly abandoned the BDFL because of backlash

I think Guido left the BDFL role in 2018, and we’ve gotten walrus operators, structured matching, and exception groups since then (just off the top of my head). There’s also been significant language/grammar accommodations towards type annotations.

Overall, I’m of the opinion that Python’s language evolution has struck a pretty nice balance — there’s always going to be something new, but I don’t feel like the syntax has stagnated.

The other poster said “The result is that the Python language is pulled in many different directions, and with each release gets increasingly bloated and strays further from its foundations.” Which is directly contradictory to your (more correct) notion that language changes have slowed and only changes with low or no additions of complexity are worked on.

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