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Are there major technical issues that make it hard to do PyPy for Python 3.5, or is it just a matter of wanting to focus 100% on the fixed target of 2.7?

PeCaN 11y ago
The main issue is that PyPy's commercial target audience (people who need fast Python, particularly for numerical calculations) doesn't care about Python 3. There's not nearly as much potential funding for Python 3 as for Python 2. Technically, Python 3 is not any harder to implement than Python 2, it's just useless.
- mangeletti 11y ago
  I think you're partially right about the reasons (the other half of the equation simply being the momentum of Python 2 efforts), but I think your last clause ("it's just useless") is incorrect. I can tell you for 100% certain that, if a project of mine could run on a version of "Python" that was even twice as fast, I would switch immediately, because 6 application servers could become 3. If the gains are even greater, that's tremendous. It's not just scientific computing that benefits, and in fact, a lot of the scientific / numerical analysis done in Python is really done in C / C ++ anyway (think Numpy, et al which delegate to compiled code for much of their expensive operations).
  - Nullabillity 11y ago
    PyPy isn't useless, Python 3 is.
  - srean 11y ago
    I think it comes down to the question how much funding would such folks be able to raise to support that effort. It is my understanding that PyPy is quite resource starved.
sametmax 11y ago
It's a matter of resources. I donated, and I invite everyone earning money with Python to do the same (http://pypy.org/py3donate.html http://pypy.org/py3donate.html). More generally, the Python community really lacks money compared to other ones. GO, PHP and JS all have bigs players spending a lot of cash on it. While some companies does invest in Python, they don't spend nearly the same amount on it, and the PSF has a very tigh budget. One of the reason is that Python is "good enough", and so people don't invest on it because they don't need more from it. While JS was so slow that Google spent millions to create the V8. It's sad, but being clean and robust and strongly community driven leads to a lack of funding for Python. I wish we had a Mark shuttlework for the language.

PeCaN 11y ago

The main issue is that PyPy's commercial target audience (people who need fast Python, particularly for numerical calculations) doesn't care about Python 3. There's not nearly as much potential funding for Python 3 as for Python 2. Technically, Python 3 is not any harder to implement than Python 2, it's just useless.

mangeletti 11y ago
I think you're partially right about the reasons (the other half of the equation simply being the momentum of Python 2 efforts), but I think your last clause ("it's just useless") is incorrect. I can tell you for 100% certain that, if a project of mine could run on a version of "Python" that was even twice as fast, I would switch immediately, because 6 application servers could become 3. If the gains are even greater, that's tremendous. It's not just scientific computing that benefits, and in fact, a lot of the scientific / numerical analysis done in Python is really done in C / C ++ anyway (think Numpy, et al which delegate to compiled code for much of their expensive operations).
- Nullabillity 11y ago
  PyPy isn't useless, Python 3 is.
- srean 11y ago
  I think it comes down to the question how much funding would such folks be able to raise to support that effort. It is my understanding that PyPy is quite resource starved.

sametmax 11y ago

It's a matter of resources. I donated, and I invite everyone earning money with Python to do the same (http://pypy.org/py3donate.html http://pypy.org/py3donate.html). More generally, the Python community really lacks money compared to other ones. GO, PHP and JS all have bigs players spending a lot of cash on it. While some companies does invest in Python, they don't spend nearly the same amount on it, and the PSF has a very tigh budget. One of the reason is that Python is "good enough", and so people don't invest on it because they don't need more from it. While JS was so slow that Google spent millions to create the V8. It's sad, but being clean and robust and strongly community driven leads to a lack of funding for Python. I wish we had a Mark shuttlework for the language.