About Python 3 • Hacker News Board

Re: About Python 3

#161

Post by w1ntermute » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 8:17 PM UTC

pudquick wrote: post #127

w1ntermute wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to this site[0], it's at 7.54%. Out of that, only 32% are running the latest version of OS X (10.9). Another 24.5% are running 10.8. So almost half of OS X users are at least 2 versions behind. Not nearly as up-to-date as you might think. 0: http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share....

So what you're saying is that greater than 56% of Macs are running operating systems at most 1.5 years old ? (10.8 + 10.9). God I wish the numbers were like that for Windows.

Well, it's a good thing then that you can't make a direct comparison between the two OSes. Apple doesn't care about developers, quickly deprecating APIs. Therefore, targeting an Apple OS that's 1.5 years old is much more tedious than targeting a Microsoft OS that's 1.5 years old.

Re: About Python 3

#162

Post by SwellJoe » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 8:18 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #108

falcolas wrote: post #82

As a development lead, we recently abandoned our plans to migrate to Python 3. Here's a short summary of why: To begin the migration, we needed to move from Python 2.6 (which is the default on our CentOS6 production boxes) to Python 2.7. This transition is actually rather hard. We can't use the packages provided in CentOS base or EPEL, because they are all complied against Python 2.6. To re-produce all of our package…

Even Debian is using Pyhon 2.7 for a while already, looks like CentOS is being quite slow.

CentOS keeps the same major version of everything through the entire life of the OS; so, five years plus two more for vital security updates. This is by design, and a completely reasonable choice.

Often, you can install additional packages that bring newer versions into the system, but they don't become the "default". So, for PHP in CentOS 5, there was a php53 package (and maybe later ones, too, I dunno), that installed alongside the standard php package and didn't break compatibility but gave users the option of using a newer PHP version.

I'm pretty sure Python 3 is available in CentOS repos (it certainly has been in Fedora repos for a long time). It's just not the default system Python you get when you type "python".

Re: About Python 3

#163

Post by nailer » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 8:18 PM UTC

erichurkman wrote: post #114

gpvos wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any serious effort to port, say, the top 1000 most popular/important packages to Python 3?

Yeah, but one of the issues is that some very popular packages for Python were already development-dead for years. PIL is a good example; the last actual PIL release was in 2009. We now have a great fork that works (Pillow), but PIL is not the only dead package that's still in active use. There are quite a few others, too.

pip warnings on non maintained packages perhaps?

Re: About Python 3

#164

Post by a3n » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 8:24 PM UTC

Consider the new programmer, or the programmer new to python, or the corporation/workgroup new to python whose focus is not at all python as python but just GSD.

They read this, or you show it to them: Should I use Python 2 or Python 3 for my development activity? https://wiki.python.org/moin/Python2orPython3

It starts off very encouraging: "Short version: Python 2.x is legacy, Python 3.x is the present and future of the language"

Then we skim down to the meat of the page: Which version should I use?

Two short version stating that 3 is great, and you should use it. If you can.

And about 20 paragraphs of caveats.

To the person who's been around the block once or twice, or doesn't want to be seen as that pie in the sky programmer to his boss whose focus is not programming and doesn't give a shit about new, what stands out is "you can use virtually every resource available in 2, and almost mostly totally in 3 also."

And if you're new in any sense, do you really want to spend the time researching if 3 is going to work for you or your group/boss/career? No, you pick 2 and GSD.

When that page is gone, or its caveats are substantially reversed, 3 will be the choice.

Re: About Python 3

#165

Post by jrochkind1 » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 8:24 PM UTC

I understand there are backwards incompatible changes in python 3.

But how hard is it to write code that works under both python 2 and python 3? Is this easy, or are the number and nature of changes so hard that this is a pain? How often do people write code that will work under both?

During the ruby 1.8 to 1.9 switch, it was common for people to write code that worked under both. How hard this was depended on the code base, but usually ranged from 'very easy' to 'medium but not that bad.'

You had to avoid the new features in 1.9.3 of course; you had to avoid a few features in 1.8.7 that had changed in backwards-incompat ways; and, mostly only around char encoding issues, you had to sometimes put in conditional code that would only run in 1.9.3. That last one was the most painful one, and overall it was sometimes a pain, but usually quite do-able, and many people did it.

Now, the ruby 1.8 to 1.9 migration was quite painful in many ways, but the fact that so many dependencies worked for a period in both 1.8 and 1.9, without requiring the developers to maintain two entirely separate codebases... is part of what made it do-able.

And, later, dependencies eventually dropping 1.8 support, of course, is part of what forced those downstream to go to 1.9.3. But by the time this happened, all of your major dependencies were probably available for 1.9.3, you rarely ran into the problem of "one dependency is only 1.8.7 but another is only 1.9.3", because of that period of many developers releasing gems that worked under both.

Re: About Python 3

#166

Post by cies » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 8:24 PM UTC

thatthatis wrote: post #156

I'm going to go against the grain here and say that moving slowly is one of my absolute favorite features about python and its libraries. Rails and django were released about the same time, rails is on version 4, django is on 1.6. Moving slowly means I can spend more of my time writing code and less of my time upgrading old code. More importantly, every release requires a perusal: did the API change, what's new, are…

i like fast movement, i like communities that dare to break things every now and then (see semver.org for the widely accepted versioning rules and should be honoured).

much do i prefer an increasingly better solution to a stable one. i'm not agueing "perfect" over "good enough"; i'm argueing "awesome" over "good enough" :)

Re: About Python 3

#167

Post by SwellJoe » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 8:32 PM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #132

claudius wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a particular reason for that? I can understand not wanting to ship GPLv3 code if it is embedded sufficiently deeply into the hardware, but it shouldn’t be a problem to ship GPLv3 Bash, as the user can change the binary delivered on the harddrive at any time?

GPL has all kinds of non-corporate friendly clauses. I wouldn't touch GPLv3 code in anything I ship either. Likewise Torvalds refuses to let GPLv3 touch the kernel.

I'm curious what specific issue Apple has with GPLv3 for something like bash? It seems to me that if they're providing the source, and not modifying the copyright/license, there would be no issue. The patent language only applies to the program itself. I guess one could view it as simple paranoia on the part of their lawyers...they took years to start shipping any GPL (v2) code on the Mac. It's actually news to me that it has bash out of the box, now; last time I used Mac OS X, it still had tcsh and an abominable development environment and I hated it.

Re: About Python 3

#168

Post by cies » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 8:32 PM UTC

steveklabnik wrote: post #43

themgt wrote: post #33

It's fascinating to compare this with ruby 1.9, released around the same time, but seemingly with a slightly better cost/benefit ratio, having nice new features and also significantly improved performance, and with ruby 1.8 being deprecated with a lot more speed and force. It got everyone to actually make the switch, and then ruby 2.0 came along, largely compatible and with a more improvements, and now ruby 2.1 seems…

Matz has also said no breaking changes until ruby 3.0, which is 'ten years away.' I don't expect this to actually be true, but it speaks to an attitude.

i feel ruby's syntax is mostly done. an addition here or there, but breaking shall be rare as it just feels so finished. performance wise i think it can use (and gets) a lot of love.

on the python side things are different. python seems quite a bit faster then ruby. same league, but faster. yet its syntax is what needs to be greatly improved upon as it is so full of surprises and dark corners.

a language's syntax it's like its API, and performance is an implementation "detail". breaking the API is much more painful then chaning the implementation -- therefor i prefer ruby's approach: begin slow but with a quite stable syntax.

p.s. i dont intend to hurt feelings with this comment

Re: About Python 3

#169

Post by baq » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 8:36 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #115

cool-RR wrote: post #8

I don't share Alex's concern. The migration to Python 3.X is a slow, but in my opinion sure process. Already many of my small internal programs run on Python 3.4, and I believe that in 1-2 years from now I'll be writing most new Django client projects in Python 3.4 (hopefully running on Pypy3).

I was even a bit surprized when he complained that people don't develop for Django using Python 3. There isn't even a year that Django supports it (with a year of "we support, but don't recommend"), and quite a few of its libraries already got ported. Yep, people underestimated the time to migration. So what? I completely agree that migration is happening. Now, let's talk about IPv6...

ipv6 actually doubles year over year, so it's not that bad. if py3 also doubles year over year, we'll see both making an impact in 5 years or so.

Re: About Python 3

#170

Post by bcj » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 8:40 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #82

As a development lead, we recently abandoned our plans to migrate to Python 3. Here's a short summary of why: To begin the migration, we needed to move from Python 2.6 (which is the default on our CentOS6 production boxes) to Python 2.7. This transition is actually rather hard. We can't use the packages provided in CentOS base or EPEL, because they are all complied against Python 2.6. To re-produce all of our package…

Our company moved from CentOS to Gentoo and we were able to drop support for 2.6. We're now (mostly) 3-compatible and are rolling out our first 3.3-based production server. We've definitely been lucky, I wish the transition had been easier for everyone.