Further thought - it's still unclear which one is the dead end, python 2 or python 3.
There is very little motivation still to prioritize python 3 when python 2 has all the users and developers - everyone ensures their stuff works on python 2, and python 3 is "voluntary extra". On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 1:20 PM, Edward K. Ream <edream...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Wednesday, January 14, 2015 at 9:31:32 AM UTC-6, Edward K. Ream wrote: >> >> On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 8:05 AM, Ville M. Vainio <vivai...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >>> FWIW, I'm pretty pessimistic about Python 3 at this point. Python 2 >>> seems to be "good enough" for most people. >>> >> >> I am not real optimistic about Python 3 myself. >> >> As Kent says, more and more packages are being ported. But Guido has >> recently promised to support Python 2K until at least 2020 (a change from >> 2015). This indicates that all is not going well. >> >> My guess is that there are some big Python 2K shops that still have no >> real notion about how they are going to transition to 3K. It doesn't >> matter how many people *have* made the transition as long as there are >> important players who haven't or can't. >> > > This is a complex topic. Here are some further thoughts: > > Guido himself clearly believed (and probably still believes) that Python 2 > is *not* good enough. > > Otoh, Guido's remarks in recent PyCon keynote speeches indicate that he > will never again attempt such a radical break with existing code. He seems > somewhat unhappy with the transition to Python 3. That may be an > understatement. Or not. He has reasons to put a brave face on things. > > Kent's remark that more and more packages are being ported to Python 3 is > more important than I originally acknowledged. The available packages, not > the problems of big shops, are what most people care about, or should care > about. > > In some ways, the big shops don't matter all that much. They can "take > care of themselves" and they can always stick with Python 2.7. When (not > if) Python 2.7 is no longer supported, big shops can start paying the price > that the core Python developers are now paying in supporting the Python 2 > code base. > > Finally, there are a growing list of reasons why Python 3 is simply better > than Python 2. I actually would *not* say that Python 3's support for > unicode is one of those reasons, but that's debatable. What is not > debatable is that Python 3 has cool new features and modules that Python > 2.8 will *never* have: > > - My favorite is pip install, the killer feature of Python 3.4. > > Yesterday I did "pip install ipython[all]" and everything Just > Worked(tm). This is the first time I have *ever* managed to install > tornado on Windows, and thus the first time that "ipython notebook" has > ever worked on windows. > > - The important asyncio module > https://docs.python.org/3/library/asyncio.html is Python 3 only. > > Yes, there is a backport to Python 2: > https://pypi.python.org/pypi/trollius > > - Function annotations, https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3107/, will > never be part of Python 2 unless they are supported in Python 2.8. > > - Similarly, the "yield from" syntax, pep 380, > https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0380/, will never be part of Python 2. > > You can quibble about how important these features are (except, pip :-), > but there is no doubt that Python 2 is a dead end. > > Edward > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "leo-editor" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to leo-editor+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to leo-editor@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to leo-editor+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to leo-editor@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.