Regarding this post and related comments, I would like to say that, as an external observer who does not know the details of CPython development decision-making process, phrases such as "Okay, then Nick and I are overruled" and "At Guido's behest" sound not so good to my ears.
Maybe you and Guido are best friends, and you are half-joking with that tone, or maybe you are responsible for that part of code, so it is your duty to change it according to BDFL last words even if you do not agree with them... I do not know. Anyway I think it would be better, in the open source world, if a code change is developed by someone who thinks it is the right thing to do, or I could not see so much difference from commercial companies and proprietary software.
Hey, just my two cents. Keep rocking! :)
I did not follow the whole thread, but did not see any "Raymond bashing". Most people are well aware of the elegance and beauty you added to Python.
I am sure Python community has much to gain having this arguments then just blindly follow any trend.
At Guido's behest, I agreed to treat this miniscule component of start-up time as being important and will review and implement some optimizations in the sprints next week. I've agreed to do this even if it comes at the expense of code clarity, complexity, or maintainability. I expect that when I'm done, _source will be a lazily generated attribute and that much of the code currently in the template will be pre-computed. This seems reasonable to me.
FWIW, I've devoted 16 years of my life to optimizing Python and care a great deal about start-up time. I'm not happy about all the Raymond bashing going on in this thread.