I've always been disappointed by how large software projects, both FOSS and commercial, lose their "can do" spirit with age. Long-time contributors become very quick with a "no". They dismiss longstanding problems as illegitimate use cases and reject patches with vague and impervious arguments about "maintainability" or "complexity". Maybe in some specific cases these concerns might be justified, but when everything garners this reaction, the overall effect is that progress stalls, crystallized at the moment the last bit of technical boldness flowed away.
You can see this attitude of "no" on this very HN thread. Read the comments! Instead of talking about ways we can make Python startup faster, we're seeing arguments that Python shouldn't be fast, we shouldn't try to make it faster, and that programs (and, by implication, programmers) who want Python startup to be fast are somehow illegitimate. It's a dismal perspective. We should be exercising our creativity as a way to solve problems, not finding creative ways to convince ourselves to accept mediocrity.
You can see this attitude of "no" on this very HN thread. Read the comments! Instead of talking about ways we can make Python startup faster, we're seeing arguments that Python shouldn't be fast, we shouldn't try to make it faster, and that programs (and, by implication, programmers) who want Python startup to be fast are somehow illegitimate. It's a dismal perspective. We should be exercising our creativity as a way to solve problems, not finding creative ways to convince ourselves to accept mediocrity.