O'Reilly Network has an interview with Guido van Rossum. One of the issues that the interview touches is the evolution of Python. This has been somewhat controversial subject in general on comp.lang.python and in the python-dev mailing list; search for "Stability and change" subject if you want to know more. Very few argue against improving the language per se, although there is a vocal minority that witholds that no major changes were necessary after Python 1.5.2. The most heated discussions however rise from proposals that would introduce backwards-incompatible changes. Substantial amount of Python developers fight against any improvement that breaks anything in their programs.

One of the reasons van Rossum wants to improve the language is that there are certain aspects of the language that he and other people consider "warts", see Kuchling's What's new in Python 2.2 and Python warts for more information. Van Rossum says in the interview: If I have to make a decision, I usually do it only after gathering plenty of feedback. That doesn't mean I always follow the recommendations though. If I have a strong intuition about what's right, and the arguments to the contrary don't sound convincing, I'll do it my way rather than deferring to "democracy."

The very reason that Python has become so beloved amongst set of programmers is that van Rossum has been brave enough to introduce changes in the language and there have been developers who have implemented them; besides van Rossum, that is. Van Rossum personally regrets introducing some features that are now practically impossible to remove, but I presume that he maintains optimism that the language could evolve to something that he wants it to.

Saying that the language is ready, ie. no more changes should be introduced, at any given point of the evolution of the language is the same as to say that van Rossum cannot make the correct decisions on language design. But saying that the language is ready is the same as to say that van Rossum indeed can make correct decisions on language design, since he has done so with the improvement of the previous versions and the original version too. Herein lies the paradox.

I personally trust van Rossum in language design issues more than I trust myself.