

Ask HN: any Googlers here can explain why no Python 3? - andrewstuart

None of Google&#x27;s SDKs (i.e. for Compute Engine) support Python 3.<p>Are there any Googlers here on HN who can give insight as to why?<p>How far into the future do we have to go till Google SDKs provide Python 3 support?
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btmorex
Not employed at google, but I'm sure I'm in a similar situation in terms of
deciding whether and when to port. There are a lot us of who think either:

1.) python3 will die (long live python 2.x)

2.) python3 will become easier to port to

If neither of those happen, python itself will probably die in the long term,
so I'm pretty confident one or the other will come to be.

~~~
andrewstuart
Any individual person of company that has internal Python systems is of course
fully entitled to decide if it wants to stick with Python 2 or move to Python
3.

On the other hand, companies that are providing SDK's or libraries to
interface to their systems have an absolute obligation to provide their code
in Python 2 and 3.

Dogmatically sticking to Python 2 is entirely valid for internal systems, but
what the heck is the point of providing interfacing code/SDKs/libraries if it
does not interface? Google is welcome to keep all its internal systems on
Python 2, but all its SDKs should support Python 3. And all Google's public
facing developer tools should support Python 3 - nothing else makes sense.

In terms of porting, plenty of people seem to have done it - here's the list:
[http://python3wos.appspot.com/](http://python3wos.appspot.com/)

~~~
SamReidHughes
> On the other hand, companies that are providing SDK's or libraries to
> interface to their systems have an absolute obligation to provide their code
> in Python 2 and 3.

Why did you state this as if it were a self-evident fact? There are seemingly
clear reasons why this belief is completely absurd.

~~~
monkeyprojects
+1. Why would you spend time creating examples for particular languages unless
the demand is there to justify the time creating them.

