It's controversial, granted, but I don't think that's a fair reading of the poll. Here's another:

* A majority (56%) of responders want some form of pattern matching.

* Exactly half of all responders, forming nearly 90% of the above majority, are fine with that form being PEP 634.

* There are differing opinions about supporting PEPs, but a supermajority (70%) of those who agree with PEP 634 are fine with it alone.

The fact that it was possible to express more nuance when agreeing with PEP 634 shouldn't diminish their voice against those who reject the idea altogether.

Going with the decision approved by 34% is a bad move. There's nothing wrong with going with it eventually, but this is a sign that as of the poll, there is no consensus and more discussion / more options should happen.

If you decide to act on this 34% anyway, you are only just telling your community that their opinion doesn't really matter. Which might explain why 60% of the eligible voters did not bother.

> but this is a sign that as of the poll, there is no consensus

agreed. I'm being pedantic on more specific conclusions, but it wasn't the best move. Even if I'm somewhere between "fine" and "happy" about this, personally.

> Exactly half of all responders, forming nearly 90% of the above majority, are fine with that form being PEP 634.

That half includes those who voted for "accept 634 + 640" or "accept 634 + 642", whom I doubt are entirely happy with the decision to accept PEP 634 and reject 640 & 642.

My point was that you cannot claim "65% of responders opposed this particular proposal". I understand, they're possibly not entirely happy. But the poll is flawed that way: "accept 634" should not mean "reject 640 & 642". I presented my reading as an alternative, but the poll isn't substantive.

That said, I interpret this part:

> PEP 642’s proposed syntax does not seem like the right way to solve the jagged edges in PEP 634’s syntax

to mean that this is merely an initial spec. Those unhappy with the syntax can avoid using it for now, there are no breaking changes. It took a couple iterations to refine the async syntax too, remember, and (IMHO) we arrived at a clean-enough version of it. I have hope!

Maybe adding new syntax should require a 2/3 majority or more.

just wait for a filibuster =)

> 34 voters

Is that not a reasonable sample of the 87 core developers eligible to vote?

https://discuss.python.org/groups/committers

It is a rather poor sample, and a sign that either more people than those 87 should be allowed to vote or there is something wrong with how the vote was conducted.

An explicit "do not care" or "none of the above" option in that poll would have shed more light into this.

If they randomly chose 34 people to poll it would be decent sample. But now it's not a sample at all. The responders are not representative of the non-responders.

The poll is from end of November, there was a lot of discussions since then.