Python 3 is killing Python

#1

Post by phiggy » Wed, Aug 13, 2014, 11:57 PM UTC

Python 3 is killing Python
medium.com

Re: Python 3 is killing Python

#2

Post by a3n » Thu, Aug 14, 2014, 1:08 AM UTC

This is sad. In my 25+ years of programming, python is the only language I've ever liked.

Re: Python 3 is killing Python

#3

Post by haney » Thu, Aug 14, 2014, 1:36 AM UTC

It has definitely been a painful process to port from python 2 to 3. We have one developer who has been pushing hard for this, and while it may not be a defensible business position we believe it's the right thing as members of the community.

There are some nontrivial improvements in Python 3 (async) that we want, but more than that we don't want python to split and languish. We think that by taking a step into python 3 (and porting our remaining dependencies) we can make a small dent.

Re: Python 3 is killing Python

#4

Post by shitgoose » Thu, Aug 14, 2014, 2:54 AM UTC

haney wrote: post #3

It has definitely been a painful process to port from python 2 to 3. We have one developer who has been pushing hard for this, and while it may not be a defensible business position we believe it's the right thing as members of the community. There are some nontrivial improvements in Python 3 (async) that we want, but more than that we don't want python to split and languish. We think that by taking a step into pytho…

It is sad. There is an expression in Russian, that in English sounds something like "hedgehogs were crying, but kept on chewing the cactus". Best of luck to your team.

Re: Python 3 is killing Python

#5

Post by teddyh » Thu, Aug 14, 2014, 12:06 PM UTC

OK, no. Most modules/libraries are ported to Python 3. The minor ones that aren’t are those that are dead upstream, and you shouldn’t be using them, and/or they should be easy to port yourself.

I really think the real reason is that people, especially English-speaking, but others, too, have been sticking their collective heads in the sand about this ASCII/Unicode situation for far too long. If, on the other hand, you started to use Unicode strings as soon as possible in Python 2, your Python 3 “port” could be two additional lines:

    if sys.version_info.major == 2:
        str = unicode

Oh yeah, the future_builtins module does not exist anymore (for obvious reasons), so its import needs to be wrapped in a try-except clause:

    try:
        from future_builtins import *
    except ImportError:
        pass

So call it five additional lines. That it literally all the porting I had to do to make two Python 2 programs completely runnable in Python 3 and Python 2, unaltered.

The problem is not Python 3. The problem is people using byte strings and Python 2’s implicit conversions of them without actually understanding what a string is.