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Python 3.3.0 released

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Re: Python 3.3.0 released

#61

Post by denzil_correa »

w1ntermute wrote: post #40
vph wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Research software typically have a very small user base and can quickly become out-of-date, so there's no great incentives for current software packages to upgrade. But I'm talking about the developer community of scientific Python, not the user community. The developer community includes such things as numpy, scipy, matplotlib, etc. are pretty much Python 3 compatible. This makes it easy for new scientific projects…

Yeah, a lot of research software in academia is written by grad students with no formal CS education who're just interested in completing their dissertation and graduating. After they've graduated and left, the codebase just languishes until the next grad student comes along, who spends a couple months trying to figure out all the spaghetti code and ridiculous hacks used by the previous student to complete their thes…

> a lot of research software in academia is written by grad students with no formal CS education

Are you sure? Because that sounds like an complete oxymoron. You probably may have meant something else. Would you like to clarify on why grad students lack formal CS education?

Re: Python 3.3.0 released

#62

Post by zanny »

dnu wrote: post #15
facorreia wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just after Visual Studio 2012 was released?

Yes. Also keep in mind that Visual Studio 2010 is the last one which will work on Windows XP and Windows Vista.

The binaries are still backwards compatible, I hope wherever the python dev team is building the binaries they aren't still running 32 bit or vista.

Re: Python 3.3.0 released

#63

Post by ville »

pendext wrote: post #34
slurgfest wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm setting aside the question of whether or why to switch. I'm also setting aside the possibility of starting to learn now on Python 2.7, which is what I think you should really do assuming you don't intend to procrastinate it ;) Assuming you do want to wait on Python 3 adoption, your timing should depend on the framework you want to use, because effectively each one has its own community and ecosystem, and their ad…

I see a couple mentions in this thread of Flask taking a while to adopt Python 3. I am relatively new to Flask, could you explain why they are seemingly behind things in regards to Python 3?

The Flask author's post about issues he has faced with Python 3 might give some insight to that: http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2011/12/7/thoughts-on-python3/

Re: Python 3.3.0 released

#64

Post by reinhardt »

protomyth wrote: post #55
tisme wrote: post #42

I've done quite a bit of python development. One of the things that really bugs me about python is how they keep breaking older stuff. Other languages have been much more careful about maintaining backwards compatibility and I think that is a big factor in the retention of users. Having to re-do any part of your code from one release of a language to another became a real deal breaker for me. For an interpreted langu…

Is there a LINT for Python? It looks like there was a question about them on Stack Overflow, but it was closed. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5611776/what-are-the-comp...

Pylint is the most comprehensive, even if too noisy by default. After editing ~/.pylintrc to disable some overly strict checks it's pretty decent.

Re: Python 3.3.0 released

#65

Post by X-Istence »

tisme wrote: post #56
Silhouette wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things that really bugs me about python is how they keep breaking older stuff. That's a fair point, and it applies to a lot more than just programming languages. Operating systems and browsers also come to mind, for example. On the other hand, if you insist on maintaining strict backward compatibility indefinitely, you have increasing drag on every useful new feature you want to introduce. You also can't r…

You're spot on. My basic expectation is that software that I write today will run 10 years from now, unmodified. Things like this give me 'upgrade fever', the fear that if I upgrade a machine something will break and I won't find out about it until it is too late. So I stick to writing software like that in compiled languages now. That requires a bit more work (ok, sometimes a lot more work) but the increased reliabi…

It is becoming harder and harder to find backwards compatibility for binary interfaces even in the open source world, where libraries move so fast and finding old versions of libraries is becoming more and more of a pain. If you dynamically linked against something 10 years from now unless you kept all of those libraries around, and their supporting files the program won't run anymore.

Backwards compatibility in Windows definitely made Microsoft a dominant market force, but it has also led to the Win32 API stagnating, and it becoming increasingly more fragile as time goes on. Also in all the old code paths, all those not often taken branches there are various bugs just waiting to be found and to be exploited. Yes it has gotten much better, but still.

Re: Python 3.3.0 released

#66

Post by w1ntermute »

denzil_correa wrote: post #61
w1ntermute wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, a lot of research software in academia is written by grad students with no formal CS education who're just interested in completing their dissertation and graduating. After they've graduated and left, the codebase just languishes until the next grad student comes along, who spends a couple months trying to figure out all the spaghetti code and ridiculous hacks used by the previous student to complete their thes…

> a lot of research software in academia is written by grad students with no formal CS education Are you sure? Because that sounds like an complete oxymoron. You probably may have meant something else. Would you like to clarify on why grad students lack formal CS education?

Yes, I'm sure. I'm referring to scientific software - that is, software written in fields such as biology, chemistry, physics, and (non-computer) engineering. There are many grad students and professors in these areas who write software for their research that have no formal background in CS.

Re: Python 3.3.0 released

#67

Post by batista »

pendext wrote: post #34
slurgfest wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm setting aside the question of whether or why to switch. I'm also setting aside the possibility of starting to learn now on Python 2.7, which is what I think you should really do assuming you don't intend to procrastinate it ;) Assuming you do want to wait on Python 3 adoption, your timing should depend on the framework you want to use, because effectively each one has its own community and ecosystem, and their ad…

I see a couple mentions in this thread of Flask taking a while to adopt Python 3. I am relatively new to Flask, could you explain why they are seemingly behind things in regards to Python 3?

Few core developers (mainly, one, Armin) that couldn't be bothered enough. It's a volunteer project after all.

He did write about the unicode problems with the Python 3 changes and the need for an improved WSGI spec (heck, he even co-wrote the unicode literal change PEP).

But after the new WSGI spec was out, and the u thing was already implemented in 3.3 pre-release, there was no much motion in Flask, whereas Pyramid, Django and others have already started work.

Even the "When will Flask support Python 3" document has not updated and is 2 years out of date in it's contents.

Re: Python 3.3.0 released

#68

Post by nilliams »

masklinn wrote: post #53
nilliams wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd tend to just ignore anyone that uses the word 'bloat' without backing their statement up with any substance/insight or perhaps acknowledgement that they may be wrong on some counts and are unlikely to understand the entire problem-space of said project to the extent they can justify deeming any significant portion of it unnecessary.

Well sure, but maybe he has genuine and interesting issues with Python 3, and maybe he just had a bad day, hasn't had his coffee yet or whatever and went with a quip rather than a complete comment. That happens.

Sure, but it's lazy either way. Cries of 'bloat' without some supporting reasoning = alarms bells suggesting willful ignorance to me.

Personally gets my goat a lot at work. It's so easy to allude to bloat, or (for example) some framework containing 'stuff you don't need' instead of doing your homework and making an effort to understand why that stuff exists.

Re: Python 3.3.0 released

#69

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

csense wrote: post #31
pkmays wrote: post #4

Not mentioned among the major features: Windows builds have finally moved to Visual Studio 2010.

It seems strange to me that they use Visual Studio rather than mingw/msys. Do any HN readers know why that is?

> It seems strange to me that they use Visual Studio rather than mingw/msys. Do any HN readers know why that is?

More widespread, easier to handle, more accepted among windows developers.

Re: Python 3.3.0 released

#70

Post by denzil_correa »

w1ntermute wrote: post #66
denzil_correa wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a lot of research software in academia is written by grad students with no formal CS education Are you sure? Because that sounds like an complete oxymoron. You probably may have meant something else. Would you like to clarify on why grad students lack formal CS education?

Yes, I'm sure. I'm referring to scientific software - that is, software written in fields such as biology, chemistry, physics, and (non-computer) engineering. There are many grad students and professors in these areas who write software for their research that have no formal background in CS.

OK - I think I'm surprised to know that those fields do write software more than anything. Thanks for the clarification.
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