Having just spend the last few weeks writing Python, this comment will come off as bitter, but - really? Out of all the shitty syntax things, this sort of thing is what they're willing to fix?
replies(7):
- Instantiating an object from a name in a string. Like instantiate a 'Foo' when you have a string variable that contains 'Foo'. I can't remember the syntax even though I looked it up two days ago, and I never will because it's such a shit show. Not to use PHP here as and example of a great language, but there at least the intuitive '$obj = new $var' works as you expect it. Or, in C++ you have to do it manually, which is also fine - at least be consistent.
- The weird sort-of typing of variables. Variables have types, but you can assign a different value of a different type to them, and the actual types usually doesn't matter except when it does. So you do print "Hey " + var but now you need to know what type var is because you might need to str() it.
- The whitespace-is-important-except-when-it-isn't. OK so braces are the devil's work, but when it's inconvenient, we're not that strict on white space (when initializing lists, when having expressions that span several lines, ...) so now everything can still look out of whack.
- .iteritems(). Really?
- super(ClassName, self).__init__(argument). Wut? Yes when I parse it token by token I understand, but why? Maybe the other magic methods are in this category too, but probably to a lesser degree.
- (I had some other things here about primitive OO capabilities, shitty package system/versioning, and some more, but those were all so far away from 'syntactic sugar' that they didn't fit this list no matter how hard I twisted the argument)
Look, I do understand why they are this way. For each of them, there is a reason that any reasonable person would say 'yeah that makes sense' to, possibly after some explanation of the history or context or whatever. But then at least be honest and stop promoting the language as so 'intuitive' or 'beginner-friendly' or 'much more clean than other languages'. Sure, it's not as bad as R, but it's still just like any other 20+ year old language in wide spread use - crufty, idiosyncratic in many respects, and in general requiring a bunch of frustrating head butting before you can be productive in it.
And to tie it to the OP - it seems this new syntax is promoted as being for 'beginners' or to make it 'easier to teach'. Well good luck with that, I say.
In PHP, a class is uniquely identified by its name, everywhere. If you define a class Foo, then new $var will resolve correctly either everywhere or nowhere (the name needs to be fully qualified, to avoid namespace headaches).
That's not the case in Python. A class Foo has the same status as any other object. That means you can't rely on its name - it could be replaced by another value. But it does mean you can pass the class itself around instead of its name. Instead of putting the string 'Foo' or the literal Foo::class into a data structure or an argument list, you can just put Foo in there, and call it later.
I think the Python approach is cleaner, but then again, it's what I already knew when I first learned how PHP did it.
Python doesn't need to instantiate classes based on string values, so it doesn't provide an easy way to do that.
Python almost allowing you to take the PHP approach is a bit of a pattern. Python is dynamic enough to let you do a lot of things you shouldn't be doing. Ugly syntax like globals()[var] is usually (but not always) a sign that you're looking for the wrong kind of solution.