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You should care. PHP7 cared about speed and it was a success. Python 3 cared pretty much everything else except for speed and now 10 years had passed it didn't

by est 10y ago

You should care. PHP7 cared about speed and it was a success. Python 3 cared pretty much everything else except for speed and now 10 years had passed it didn't go anywhere.

nhumrich 10y ago
Ya, I guess the title is slightly misleading. But the point is that speed isnt everything. I will still use Python regardless of it being slow. That being said, Python3 is actually faster than python2 for most things, IIRC
metaphorm 10y ago
Python 3's long road to full adoption is much more about mishandling major breaking changes than it is about lack of performance optimizations.
- snovv_crash 10y ago
  If Python3 was 5x as fast i can tell you right now that people would be scrambling head over heels to migrate. Instead they are migrating because they no longer have support for their libraries, or because someone said they were a bad person for not keeping up with the latest cool thing.
  - kungtotte 10y ago
    There is a significant amount of people stuck on 2.7 due to platform restrictions; quite a few OSes still under support are using 2.7 as their system Python and there's no incentive to upgrade these systems. Even if Python 3 was 10x as fast, sysadmins would hesitate to put what's effectively an unsupported version of Python on their systems. Massive performance increases would help to sway those who have the freedom to move to a different Python without being locked to their system, I agree about that much.
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    I sincerely doubt that. PyPy is advertised as being about 7x as fast ad CPython and yet it also has incredibly low adoption rates because of potential breakage and incompatibilities.
teilo 10y ago
Not really true. Python 3.6 is basically at speed parity with Python 2. There are a few outliers, but in most cases 3 is as fast or faster than 2. Python 3 adoption is exactly where the devs wanted it to be 10 years later. Almost all major libraries have been ported. Python 3 adoption is only growing. More than 30% of new projects use it. Expect that to grow substantially as 3.6 is adopted. "didn't go anywhere" is therefore FUD.
dyeje 10y ago
The Python 3 debacle has pretty much nothing to do with performance from what I understand.
pbreit 10y ago
Isn't Python3's primary issue that it killed developer productivity?
- lawnchair_larry 10y ago
  How would it do that?
  - pbreit 10y ago
    Major project just to stay in place. And then all the modules that aren't ready. Basically tons of work just to get the same result. Infinitely unproductive.
mrweasel 10y ago
That's a very weird argument. I pretty much exclusively use Python 3, so to me it seems hugely successful, where as I didn't even know that PHP7 existed.

by est 10y ago

You should care. PHP7 cared about speed and it was a success. Python 3 cared pretty much everything else except for speed and now 10 years had passed it didn't go anywhere.

nhumrich 10y ago

Ya, I guess the title is slightly misleading. But the point is that speed isnt everything. I will still use Python regardless of it being slow. That being said, Python3 is actually faster than python2 for most things, IIRC

metaphorm 10y ago

Python 3's long road to full adoption is much more about mishandling major breaking changes than it is about lack of performance optimizations.

snovv_crash 10y ago
If Python3 was 5x as fast i can tell you right now that people would be scrambling head over heels to migrate. Instead they are migrating because they no longer have support for their libraries, or because someone said they were a bad person for not keeping up with the latest cool thing.
- kungtotte 10y ago
  There is a significant amount of people stuck on 2.7 due to platform restrictions; quite a few OSes still under support are using 2.7 as their system Python and there's no incentive to upgrade these systems. Even if Python 3 was 10x as fast, sysadmins would hesitate to put what's effectively an unsupported version of Python on their systems. Massive performance increases would help to sway those who have the freedom to move to a different Python without being locked to their system, I agree about that much.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  I sincerely doubt that. PyPy is advertised as being about 7x as fast ad CPython and yet it also has incredibly low adoption rates because of potential breakage and incompatibilities.

teilo 10y ago

Not really true. Python 3.6 is basically at speed parity with Python 2. There are a few outliers, but in most cases 3 is as fast or faster than 2. Python 3 adoption is exactly where the devs wanted it to be 10 years later. Almost all major libraries have been ported. Python 3 adoption is only growing. More than 30% of new projects use it. Expect that to grow substantially as 3.6 is adopted. "didn't go anywhere" is therefore FUD.

dyeje 10y ago

The Python 3 debacle has pretty much nothing to do with performance from what I understand.

pbreit 10y ago

Isn't Python3's primary issue that it killed developer productivity?

lawnchair_larry 10y ago
How would it do that?
- pbreit 10y ago
  Major project just to stay in place. And then all the modules that aren't ready. Basically tons of work just to get the same result. Infinitely unproductive.

mrweasel 10y ago

That's a very weird argument. I pretty much exclusively use Python 3, so to me it seems hugely successful, where as I didn't even know that PHP7 existed.