As Armin Ronacher pointed out, it's a bit odd having the importlib.abc.Loader ABC have a method whose default does nothing and having the method itself be entirely optional. Might as well just drop it from the ABC and instead just make sure that create_module() is documented appropriately (it's such an advanced use case it might also simplify things to not have it in the typical user's face).

I suggest waiting until we update the C extension import system before making a final decision - that was the concrete use case for the feature, so it may become less confusing once that is added.

This issue is not talking about dropping create_module() from the algorithm (I need it for the lazy loader), just from the ABC since it's a do-nothing implementation that doesn't have to be there.

Otherwise it should be made a required method and possibly even not have its return None special-casing.

Issue bpo-23014 is planning to make create_module() required so that module creation doesn't have a two-tiered way of specifying a default module (which is handy in C code).

create_module() is now slated to be required in Python 3.6.