
Viewing Python 3.2 as the successor to Python 2.7 - mattyb
http://sayspy.blogspot.com/2010/10/viewing-python-32-as-successor-to.html
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jnoller
The short version is this: Python-Dev is working on the release we hope people
are using _in a few years_ , not the one we hope you use in a _a few months_.

Python 2.7 will live for a _long time_ (years) as a stable, bug-fixed release.

There are no compelling features to "force" the existence of a 2.8 release,
which would overly stress already over-allocated resources.

~~~
daemon
The majority of my day is spent working on projects on Google App Engine, so
I'm forced to use 2.5.

I have a couple of toy projects in 3.x, but I'm stuck until GAE changes.

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jnoller
Yup, and that will be the same story for some time. Again, we're talking
years.

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matrix
Does anyone know if there are enough compatible libraries out there to make
using Python 3 in production viable yet? Last time I looked into it (about 6
months ago), it was a non-starter for me.

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parfe
If you have to ask then why even bother moving to python3 at this point? If
you don't want a python3 feature bad enough to keep up with the library
releases you depend on then chances are the major version of python you are
running is inconsequential.

When the time comes, say Debian stable defaulting to python3, or RHEL (haha)
then you can deal with porting.

Otherwise as an end user Python2.X is quite alright.

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simonsarris
A very clear post on the future of the Python language that should probably be
sung from mountain-tops in addition to being said in this blog post. Or at the
very least, stated on every download page of the latest 2.x releases on
python.org.

I still wonder about the rate of 3.x adoption will be, though. My university
(RPI) still had Python 2.4 on all the CS machines last year, which made some
minor things (I wish I could remember one!) a bit frustrating.

~~~
sigzero
I also wonder how Django not adopting it for a while is going to affect the
transition as well. I realize a lot of other things are in play but Django is
a big one I think.

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barnaby
It's not like Djangonauts are against moving to 3.x it will happen, and
probably sooner/faster than you think.

As for universities upgrading, it's like people who still use Windows XP and
IE6. Most people have already upgraded but the long tail will stick around for
a long time for no discernible reason.

~~~
sigzero
I watched the last panel where the Django core team talked. It didn't sound
like it would sooner/faster than I thought it would. It will happen is about
all they said.

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njharman
Most (only) interesting thing mentioned was 3to2
<http://www.startcodon.com/wordpress/?p=373>

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aidenn0
What the dev doesn't understand is that from the users' point of view, 2.7
doesn't even exist yet, much less 3.2 Virtually everyone not administering
their own machine is using 2.4 or 2.5

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jacobolus
That was just as much the case when 2.5 had just been released and “virtually
everyone” was still using 2.2 or 2.3 (or perhaps even 1.5.2).

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lelele
I'm missing the point. What's the deal with language designers wanting to have
just one version of a language? Why can you mix and match Python and C while
still not being able to mix and match Python 2 and Python 3? Just stop
improving and adding features to the Python 2 side.

Of course people want backward compatibility: don't you know that developing
software is hard work? Even old and stale libraries can be useful: why should
we discard them?

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lelele
Could anyone please explain why I'm being downvoted? A compiler/interpreter
which can compile/interpret two versions of a language is out of this world? I
think it's the most pragmatic approach: let people use old libraries while
allowing them to develop with the improved language.

If I'm not mistaken, ISE Eiffel (now EiffelStudio) can compile both C/C++ and
Eiffel sources to make a single executable. ISE Eiffel however is an
industrial-strength compiler backed by a great software engineer.

Current Common Lisp compilers can compile source code as old as fifty years
ago with little or no modifications. Now, that's backward compatibility.

