Mark Shannon writes: > Calling something a "reference" implementation suggests that it is > something that people can refer to, that is near perfectly correct and > fills in the gaps in the specification.
Shoe fits, doesn't it? Both Guido and Brandt to my recall have specifically considered the possibility that the implementation is the better design, and therefore that the PEP should be changed. > That is a high standard, and one that is very difficult to attain. That depends on context, doesn't it? In the case of a public release, yes, it's a very high standard. In the context of a feature in development, it *cannot* be that high, because even when the spec and the implementation are in *perfect* agreement, both may be changed in the light of experience or a change in requirements. Furthermore, in this instance, the implementation achieves *your* standard (Brandt, again): > > both authors have agreed that it needs to be fixed in the PEP, > > not the implementation You added: > It is why I use the term "implementation", and not "reference > implementation" in my PEPs. A reasonable usage. I think my more flexible, context-dependent definition is more useful. Unmodified, the word "implementation" covers everything from unrunnable pseudo-code to the high standard of a public release that is officially denoted "reference implementation". On the other hand, when Brandt says that a merge request is a "reference implementation", I interpret that to be a claim that, to his knowledge the MR is a perfect implementation of the specification, and an invitation to criticize the specification by referring to that implementation. That's a strong claim, even in my interpretation. However, I think that if the developer dares to make it, it's very useful to reviewers. As it was in this case. Final note: once this is merged and publicly released, it will lose its status as reference implementation in the above, strong sense. Any deviations from documented spec (the Language Reference) will be presumed to have to be fixed in the implementation (with due consideration for backward compatibility). "Although practicality beats purity," of course, but treating the Language Reference as authoritative is strongly preferred to keeping the implementation and modifying the Reference (at least as I understand it). Regards, Steve _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list -- python-dev@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-dev-le...@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-dev.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-dev@python.org/message/AOM3ZPO4U263T2ZYGDOLFWIDOO2QSKZB/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
