81–90 of 281 posts
The argument is bad but the headline has a point: the value of a language is the quality of its libraries and the community that maintains it. Python 3 seems like a mistake; it fractured the community and sent people away. (to golang, to scala, probably even to ruby). If I were a library maintainer on py2 I would have felt betrayed by py3. Suddenly print is a function? 'yield from' won't be available on the py2 branc…
There's good criticism here, but I can't help but feel the rest is mostly Zed flipping out. Regarding 2to3 not being flawless: agree, could be better. Regarding core libraries: agree, but the same problem exists on Python 2 (different core libraries have different levels of compatibility for taking string or unicode as arguments), so I don't see how this can be a recommendation against 3 specifically. Regarding new s…
The thing to remember though is that 2to3 will never be flawless. Since the underlying representation of some things has been split into different types, it simply impossible to automatically fix some code.
For example a function returning the first letter read from a file object is going to be completely different and more explicit in py3 than it was in py2. And the end result it better. You have to fix some code now - tough.
I didn't know Zed Shaw was that stupid. Or is he just trolling?
After 8 years the man has a point, most of his arguments are not correct though. Conclusion stands, python is shooting itself in the foot.
If Guido had said "2 is done. Deal with it, fuck you." a long time ago, this wouldn't be an issue today. Breaking language changes are nothing new, but mgmt this weak is.
Hell, I primarily work in C# and I LOVE the breaking changes of .NET Core and Standard. They tore the garbage out, and it runs on Linux. Awesome!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Node is an interpreter for the v8 JavaScript engine and it uses a language named JavaScript. There isn't a language named node :) I've done Python about as long as you but also like Golang for things Python is awful at.
Javascript is a colloquial name for what is formally known as ECMAScript. There isn't a language named JavaScript :)
The OP was basically talking about the JVM as if it was a language.
*edit typo
I honestly don't get how this is still even an issue, if you're stuck with libraries that haven't been migrated to Python 3.x you have my sympathy - but I have had 0 need to touch any Python 2.x code in over 3 years - in fact, all of the Python code I have deployed at work is Python 3.x only. Python 3 is a non-issue in my eyes, the only reason I don't use it more is because there's only one other developer on my team…
"It's sad to watch Python destroy itself because it's such a great language, but that seems to be where things are headed." The author has a point here. I've been programming Python for about 10 years now. Really concerned about the future of the language. Languages like Node and Go are progressing rapidly, but what's happening to Python? I used to complain about Node, but with the latest ES6/ES7 improvements it's ac…
I mean, what's up with the Turing completeness? Someone needs to give this guy a wake up call.
One feature of Python 3 that I found really pleasantly useful recently (thank you SO :) ) was passing generators to the zip() function in a for loop, like: for a, b in zip(generatorA(), generatorB()): In Python 2 you have to import itertools to do this. I bring this up because I find examples like this all the time in Python 3 where core, modern language features like generators are more tightly integrated and easier…
Pretty sure Zed's playing a joke on experienced programmes. He's clearly mentioned that the book is for complete beginners and that's why the entire section for experienced programmers is crap. Funny how many haven't seen it and are arguing pointlessly.