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Python 2 removed from Debian

bugs.debian.org

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Re: Python 2 removed from Debian

#171

Post by saila »

andrewstuart wrote: post #141

It craps me off that I still need to look up which direction to encode/decode strings and other things like bytes and ascii even after programming Python 3 for more than 10 years. It's a huge usability fail on the part of Python that it's not obvious and easily memorable how to do this.

It's not that complicated nor is it a Python specific issue. This is a good article on the topic:

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/10/08/the-absolute-minim...

A simplistic summary is that you always decode to unicode and always encode to bytes.

Another way to think about it is that Unicode is an idealized character model that is reified into a byte encoding, usually UTF-8, for practical usage.

It seems to me that this is something a lot of developers don't think too much about until they run into some obscure encoding/decoding issue, but it's kind of a fundamental aspect of programming that's worth spending some time grokking.

Re: Python 2 removed from Debian

#172

Post by pixelfarmer »

whirlwin wrote: post #44

As mentioned by several people already, the migration process from 2 to 3 was really painful. It will be easier for the Python core maintainers, but introducing a breaking change with the intent that that version 2 will be deprecated has probably caused more distress overall, especially maintainers of other open source projects which rely on a specific python version. Let's never have the same kind of breaking change…

Python 3.0 was released almost 15 years ago and it was clear at that point that Python 2 would be shown the door eventually. My empathy for any complaints regarding that switch is exactly 0, even for open source projects.

Re: Python 2 removed from Debian

#173

Post by xdennis »

Stranger43 wrote: post #126
psychphysic wrote: post #94

2to3 really showed that Python didn't understand their audience. If they had started a new project called COBRA and just eventually had it over take python the world would be all over it. But massive breaking changes going from 2 to 3 was a disaster for their audience. Worse still you could hear the acrimony in Pythons communications on the topic.

You mean the way rakudo took over the entire perl ecosystem when it finally arrived? I suspect a lot of the controversial decusions made doing the 2to3 migration by the python foundation was deliberately designed to avoid a situation similar to what happened to perl when the time came to cleanup some of the old cruft from the language.

The difference is that Perl 6/Raku was a huge change from Perl 5. For Python, the small improvements weren't worth the break in compatibility.

Re: Python 2 removed from Debian

#174

Post by oefrha »

majewsky wrote: post #153
t43562 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best thing about significant whitespace is the reduction in pernickety code review comments about it compared to other languages. If you also agree to "just run black" to format code then that kind of bullshit drops to almost 0 in a team.

But if you agree on a certain formatting tool anyway, then you don't need significant whitespace to get that. That's one of the things I like most about Go. It shipped with gofmt from day one, so literally no one ever argues about coding style.

People totally do argue about go coding style. Since gofmt doesn’t do line breaks, where to break long lines is a constant struggle. You also have stricter formatters like gofumpt addressing certain problems not handled by gofmt, but the long line problem is still up in the air AFAIK.

Re: Python 2 removed from Debian

#175

Post by andrewstuart »

maxbond wrote: post #160
andrewstuart wrote: post #141

It craps me off that I still need to look up which direction to encode/decode strings and other things like bytes and ascii even after programming Python 3 for more than 10 years. It's a huge usability fail on the part of Python that it's not obvious and easily memorable how to do this.

You encode strings to bytes, you decode bytes to strings. A string is an abstract representation of text, which can be encoded into whatever supported format you'd like; bytes are a concrete representation of binary data, such as text encoded in UTF8, which, if it represents text, can be decoded to obtain a string. If you think about it, that's the only way that makes sense; if you wanted to go from, say, UTF8 to UTF…

I understand the reasons, it’s Python's fault that it’s not easy to remember and program.

This is a key reason why people hated Python 3 so much IMO.

For context I’m a huge advocate of Python 3, except for this (and lambda functions, but that’s another whine session).

Re: Python 2 removed from Debian

#177

Post by jacquesm »

captainmuon wrote: post #167
jacquesm wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, and nice to have a contrasting datapoint. I do think that "The libraries are very powerful, but a lot of them are hacks. Numpy and Pandas totally rely on magic and overloading the array indexing operator. You can't express a problem the natural way or it will be slow, you have to think the numpy way. I find it especially confusing if you create expressions with numpy arrays. Am I operating on them elemen…

You are right, you can't separate the language and the libraries, and a language would profit if it had a way to express these abstractions better. But if you'd that kind of syntax the Python language I think it would become bloated. I think I like Python, because coming from C, a lot of things that are tedious there are effortless in Python (Strings! Lists and dicts, libraries, and so on.)

I came from C as well and even though Python does make strings, dicts and so on easier the main difference between the two (compiled vs interpreted) is exactly why you get all those libraries in the first place: it is super hard to get good performance out of an interpreted language if you want to crunch numbers.

That's why each and every number crunching problem will eventually make use of the various escape hatches to call libraries written in a language that is performant.

As for strings: BASIC also had strings. That doesn't mean that having strings (or even dicts) is what makes a language elegant.

The problem really is that there are only so many sweet spots for programming languages and usually those come with limitations with respect to the domain you want to use them for. Pick any two: expressive, fast, easy to use.

Re: Python 2 removed from Debian

#178

Post by andrewstuart »

saila wrote: post #171
andrewstuart wrote: post #141

It craps me off that I still need to look up which direction to encode/decode strings and other things like bytes and ascii even after programming Python 3 for more than 10 years. It's a huge usability fail on the part of Python that it's not obvious and easily memorable how to do this.

It's not that complicated nor is it a Python specific issue. This is a good article on the topic: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/10/08/the-absolute-minim... A simplistic summary is that you always decode to unicode and always encode to bytes. Another way to think about it is that Unicode is an idealized character model that is reified into a byte encoding, usually UTF-8, for practical usage. It seems to me that…

It’s not that I don’t understand it.

The problem is that encode and decode are directional constructs that change depending on context.

That’s a poor UI in Python.

Re: Python 2 removed from Debian

#179

Post by tsimionescu »

maxnoe wrote: post #83
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #50

Glad this is finally mostly over, but... that was bad. I wonder if the energy that had to be put into this migration by everyone involved was worth what seems to be relatively small improvements. The print-as-a-statement was ugly but convenient and didn't seem like a big deal, the integer division was something that you could live with once you knew about it (and you still need to know what the current behavior is),…

The removal of implicit conversion between bytes and strings via ascii did not introduce bugs, it showed were you already had bugs that you maybe did not yet notice.

That's only true if you ever received Unicode input. There are plenty of uses of strings that never do - enums, DNS domain names, URLs, HTTP parsing, email addresses (from any sane provider) etc.
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