5 ms·

Yeah, I'd argue this article is itself a quite amazing form of denial. The idea that 7 years into the transition, "20% of the scientific Python community and 20

by themgt 11y ago

Yeah, I'd argue this article is itself a quite amazing form of denial. The idea that 7 years into the transition, "20% of the scientific Python community and 20% of the Python web community have [switched to Python 3]" is simply abysmal. Ruby and Python were always going to have problems with computing's concurrent future, but holy damn did Python just tie its shoelaces together and completely unsurprisingly fall on its face. The fact no one is doing a "Ruby 2, 20% of rubyists finally reaching acceptance" blog post is a testament to how to move a language forward properly. And ffs is Ruby 2.x not more of an upgrade from 1.8 than Python 3 is from 2?

takeda 11y ago
There was nothing wrong with Python 3, what they really messed up is to give so much time for the transition. 10 freaking years!!! That's the problem, people won't do anything unless you light fire under their asses. Ruby f-cked up with 1.8 to 1.9 transition (notice that it was also a minor version change) yet people migrated without a problem because they knew that if they stay on 1.8 soon their programs will stop working everywhere. Python did everything they could do to help migrate (it even allows you to install all versions (I know there are no problem with anything between 2.4 - 3.5) and have them run without conflicts side by side. The only mistake they made is to give too large window for migration. People just now started working on migrating to 3.x because development on 2.7 stopped in 2015 (even though 3.x was available for 7 years now). And there are still people who will wait until 2020 (once security patches will stop being provided) until they will decide to move. There's so much FUD with Python 3, and goes as far as people wondering which version to use to learn it. I mean learning all the difference is at most as couple hours (and I'm being conservative here). For a beginner the only major difference is that the print is a function and not a statement, the whole unicode is barely noticeable unless you are writing code that should work on 2.x which shows it was needed, because wringing correct unicode code in 2.x is hard.
- BuckRogers 11y ago
  Ruby 1.8 code does not just "stop working". Just as this 2020 Python2.7 political stunt won't stop anyone's code from working. The migration window was extended because the core development team didn't want to lose control of Python(2). Someone else would've taken control for sure, and for myself, I've already ported to PyPy4 instead of Python3. A much easier transition than going to Python3 and nets you CPU performance and GIL-free Python.
  - takeda 11y ago
    What I meant is that as time passes it's harder and harder to get working Ruby 1.8 installation. With RHEL for example you're guaranteed that there will be Python 2.7 until 2024, which delays adoption. As for PyPy4, majority of people don't chose python for performance. Even PyPy will perform worse than statically compiled languages. If performance is the goal, you should probably look into golang or even C.
    - BuckRogers 11y ago
      You can have the best of every world with Python on PyPy. Most people agree PyPy's performance levels reach the point of "good enough", while allowing you to write pure Python. Personally, I prefer to write Python over Go or C. No reason to not have your cake and eat it too.

by themgt 11y ago

takeda 11y ago

There was nothing wrong with Python 3, what they really messed up is to give so much time for the transition. 10 freaking years!!! That's the problem, people won't do anything unless you light fire under their asses. Ruby f-cked up with 1.8 to 1.9 transition (notice that it was also a minor version change) yet people migrated without a problem because they knew that if they stay on 1.8 soon their programs will stop working everywhere. Python did everything they could do to help migrate (it even allows you to install all versions (I know there are no problem with anything between 2.4 - 3.5) and have them run without conflicts side by side. The only mistake they made is to give too large window for migration. People just now started working on migrating to 3.x because development on 2.7 stopped in 2015 (even though 3.x was available for 7 years now). And there are still people who will wait until 2020 (once security patches will stop being provided) until they will decide to move. There's so much FUD with Python 3, and goes as far as people wondering which version to use to learn it. I mean learning all the difference is at most as couple hours (and I'm being conservative here). For a beginner the only major difference is that the print is a function and not a statement, the whole unicode is barely noticeable unless you are writing code that should work on 2.x which shows it was needed, because wringing correct unicode code in 2.x is hard.

BuckRogers 11y ago
Ruby 1.8 code does not just "stop working". Just as this 2020 Python2.7 political stunt won't stop anyone's code from working. The migration window was extended because the core development team didn't want to lose control of Python(2). Someone else would've taken control for sure, and for myself, I've already ported to PyPy4 instead of Python3. A much easier transition than going to Python3 and nets you CPU performance and GIL-free Python.
- takeda 11y ago
  What I meant is that as time passes it's harder and harder to get working Ruby 1.8 installation. With RHEL for example you're guaranteed that there will be Python 2.7 until 2024, which delays adoption. As for PyPy4, majority of people don't chose python for performance. Even PyPy will perform worse than statically compiled languages. If performance is the goal, you should probably look into golang or even C.
  - BuckRogers 11y ago
    You can have the best of every world with Python on PyPy. Most people agree PyPy's performance levels reach the point of "good enough", while allowing you to write pure Python. Personally, I prefer to write Python over Go or C. No reason to not have your cake and eat it too.