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I don't take this lesson. Java also managed by adding new features sorely desired. PHP 4 to 5 was great. PHP 6 is a story much like Python 3, but the PHP commun
by Jach 10y ago
I don't take this lesson. Java also managed by adding new features sorely desired. PHP 4 to 5 was great. PHP 6 is a story much like Python 3, but the PHP community had the good sense to abort it instead of forcing everyone along and PHP 7 will probably not take long to move to. Perl 6 can run Perl 5 code, not sure of your point there, I think the issue with Perl 6 is just how big it is. The only feature that intrigues me anymore there is making grammar-parsing as easy as regexes.
Python 3 had no carrots, as others mention it only seems like now it's got enough going for it to be worthwhile. That's the lesson even Microsoft forgets and relearns continuously: if you're going to push out a major upgrade, you better have nice carrots attached. The stick only approach doesn't work when there is competition, and Python has plenty of competition, lots of it just with itself.
- username223 10y ago> Python 3 had no carrots,... The stick only approach doesn't work... I don't use Python for any serious development these days, but this is my impression as well. Python 3's promise was "we'll break all of your code in exchange for a few minor things some people think are improvements." When users balked, the devs decided to force the change by brow-beating and shaming users, with predictable results. Perl 6 had lots of carrots, but was so different that the only plausible portability story was to run existing code in an embedded Perl 5 interpreter with some kind of interoperability layer. It's a new language, still looking for its niche. Ruby devs were so used to breaking changes that they considered porting to 1.9 to be more of the usual. Meanwhile, C and C++ happily coexist, despite major divergence by C++ and minor incompatible changes by both languages.