The Case Against Python 3

Post by pdonis » Wed, Nov 23, 2016, 7:34 AM UTC

lisper wrote: post #67

> The strings in Python 3 are very difficult to use for beginners. In an attempt to make their strings more "international" they turned them into difficult to use types with poor error messages. Every time you attempt to deal with characters in your programs you'll have to understand the difference between byte sequences and Unicode strings. The author has this exactly backwards. It is Python2 that makes the weird di…

Post by joatmon-snoo » Wed, Nov 23, 2016, 7:37 AM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #201

lisper wrote: post #67

> The strings in Python 3 are very difficult to use for beginners. In an attempt to make their strings more "international" they turned them into difficult to use types with poor error messages. Every time you attempt to deal with characters in your programs you'll have to understand the difference between byte sequences and Unicode strings. The author has this exactly backwards. It is Python2 that makes the weird di…

> Python bytes are constrained to be 8-bits wide ?? Aren't all bytes 8 bits wide?

Post by pdonis » Wed, Nov 23, 2016, 7:45 AM UTC

joatmon-snoo wrote: post #203

pdonis wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Python bytes are constrained to be 8-bits wide ?? Aren't all bytes 8 bits wide?

Nope! (TIL) http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5516044/system-where-1-by... I think in the context of the original answer there's also the problem that char types aren't necessarily 8 bits wide, e.g. wchar etc.

Post by rubberstamp » Wed, Nov 23, 2016, 7:49 AM UTC

esaym wrote: post #78

mastazi wrote: post #5

On the other hand, I never suggest Learn Python The Hard Way or Codecademy to any new programmer, because I don't want them to ask me down the line "why you directed me to an obsolete Python course?". I think I'm not the only one. So I'm not sure what's the net result of those decisions made by the two sites, do they really help in keeping Python 2 alive?

I attended a few newbie classes at pycon2016. A few of them suggested Learn Python The Hard Way, to which I pointed out how the author states to never try installing python 3 on the first page.

Post by dagw » Wed, Nov 23, 2016, 7:55 AM UTC

RandomInteger4 wrote: post #145

mazelife wrote: post #76

This has to be the ne plus ultra of Python scaremongering. It describes some sort of bizzaro world of a doomed language which it populates with Machiavellian Python maintainers, brainwashed developers, and a small group of heroic holdouts who see resisting Python 3 as a moral imperative. Apparently having too many string formatting options is a moral issue (three, to be specific). As someone who writes a _lot_ of Pyt…

I feel like I'm the only one who learned Python from the official site's tutorial page: https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/index.html I found it really helpful.