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> Python 3 breakage and async turned out to be prescient, fantastic decisions. The jury is still out on the Python 3 decision, to be honest. Heck, Python 2 is

> Python 3 breakage and async turned out to be prescient, fantastic decisions. The jury is still out on the Python 3 decision, to be honest. Heck, Python 2 is still officially supported until 2020. Python 3 adoption is increasing, but the instability and breakage that it introduced caused a lot of knock-on effects throughout the Python community that held it back and hindered its adoption and mindshare. It'll take a while before we can really say whether the long-term gains will make up for that.

jimmaswell 8y ago
I'll probably never switch for personal use. The print statement change is intolerable to me. It would have cost them nothing to just leave the old syntax in. It's supposed to be a quick and convenient scripting language and they're actively working to make it more verbose and less convenient. I also still don't like not being able to use "string" objects as dumb byte containers, like I do with an IRC bot that doesn't crash with an encoding exception trying to write IRC control characters into a text file. Yes, I know I can work around that wrapping everything up nice and pretty to tell python "this isn't a real string it's okay you don't need to throw an encoding exception ssh." I just don't think that's good design.
- keymone 8y ago
  Syntax regularity is infinitely more important than scripting convenience.
  - jimmaswell 8y ago
    Button regularity on your keyboard is infinitely more important than ergonomics too, right? Anything but a grid of equally-sized squares must be wrong by virtue of aesthetics. Spoken language too: let's eliminate all contractions because they reduce regularity. Let's also make all the speed limits in the country equal at 20mph, because regularity is infinitely more important than convenience. You should be supporting return being made into a function too, right? That would be much more regular. Reminder that a guideline of python was supposed to be "practicality beats purity" which is in stark contrast to the changes to print and strings. [1] Reminds me of the gradual shift of the message on the wall in Animal Farm from "four legs good, two legs bad" to "four legs good, two legs better." 1: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/ https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/
    - keymone 8y ago
      Are you fingers equally spaced square shape manipulators? I don’t support having return at all. Statements that are not expressions are a mistake. Syntax irregularities are anti-practical.
- mywittyname 8y ago
  Try Ruby.
  - cutler 8y ago
    Aw, alright then.
cuckcuckspruce 8y ago
Python 3 avoided becoming what Perl 6 has. That alone is a victory.
- jandrese 8y ago
  Is there even a "production ready" version of Perl 6 yet? It has to be the worst example of production hell for a computer language in history. It's the poster boy for the second system effect.
  - lizmat 8y ago
    There has been a production ready version of Rakudo Perl 6 (https://perl6.org https://perl6.org) since Christmas 2015. It has been on a monthly release cycle for years, and a 3-monthly release cycle for Rakudo Star, the "user" distribution (with some bells and whistles added). Cro (https://cro.services https://cro.services) is a set of libraries for building reactive distributed systems. Comma IDE (https://commaide.com https://commaide.com) is an IDE for Perl 6, based on the JetBrains IDEA platform, now in (paid) beta. If you want to keep up-to-date on Perl 6 development, check out the Perl 6 Weekly (https://p6weekly.wordpress.com https://p6weekly.wordpress.com).
nas 8y ago
> The jury is still out on the Python 3 decision, to be honest. It's not. Python 3 has overtaken 2 and there is no stopping migration to it now. Python 3.7 is a lot better than 2.7. Just on memory use alone, 3.7 is massively better. Sure, there will be some hold outs on 2.7 for a long time. That's fine. Also, this is not the say that migration from 2 to 3 was handled well. It wasn't. Python 3.0 should have had backwards compatible features like allowing the 'u' string prefix. Indexing byte strings should have returned length one byte strings. Byte strings should have supported at least a minimal amount of %-style formats. Etc. That has all been mostly resolved and is in the past. Mistakes were made because, shock, the Python core developers are not perfect and didn't foresee all the migration issues. However, there is no way that we are going back and reviving the Python 2.x branch.
- TylerE 8y ago
  How much momentum was lost in the transition though? I know that with the pain of 3 at the time a lot of people started looking at languages like Go or even Scala.
  - lenocinor 8y ago
    Python currently still 4th at https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ . As the most popular scripting language on there by some margin, I'd say they're still doing pretty well.
- olooney 8y ago
  It was touch and go for a couple of years there but yeah, Python 3 is now well and truly over the hump. The Python 3 Readiness Project now lists [341](http://py3readiness.org/ http://py3readiness.org/) of the 360 most common packages as Python 3 compatible. Even that's underselling it really. For example it lists BeautifulSoup as not converted, but the link goes to BeautifulSoup 3.2.1. However, BeautifulSoup4 works great on Python 3. And for MySQL there's mysqlclient and several others, and since database packages usually follow PEP 249 pretty closely its very easy to switch. So in reality, rather than 341/360, its more like "everything worth converting has been converted." Or just "everything" for short.
pjmlp 8y ago
Well, many embedded developers will never move beyond C89 unless forced to do so. Meanwhile C22 work is ongoing.
- llukas 8y ago
  > Well, many embedded compilers will never move beyond C89 unless vendor is forced to do so. FTFY
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Not really, many of those developers do have C99 compilers with partial C11 support at their disposal. There are almost no vendors left offering C89 only compilers.

jimmaswell 8y ago

I'll probably never switch for personal use. The print statement change is intolerable to me. It would have cost them nothing to just leave the old syntax in. It's supposed to be a quick and convenient scripting language and they're actively working to make it more verbose and less convenient. I also still don't like not being able to use "string" objects as dumb byte containers, like I do with an IRC bot that doesn't crash with an encoding exception trying to write IRC control characters into a text file. Yes, I know I can work around that wrapping everything up nice and pretty to tell python "this isn't a real string it's okay you don't need to throw an encoding exception ssh." I just don't think that's good design.

keymone 8y ago
Syntax regularity is infinitely more important than scripting convenience.
- jimmaswell 8y ago
  Button regularity on your keyboard is infinitely more important than ergonomics too, right? Anything but a grid of equally-sized squares must be wrong by virtue of aesthetics. Spoken language too: let's eliminate all contractions because they reduce regularity. Let's also make all the speed limits in the country equal at 20mph, because regularity is infinitely more important than convenience. You should be supporting return being made into a function too, right? That would be much more regular. Reminder that a guideline of python was supposed to be "practicality beats purity" which is in stark contrast to the changes to print and strings. [1] Reminds me of the gradual shift of the message on the wall in Animal Farm from "four legs good, two legs bad" to "four legs good, two legs better." 1: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/ https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/
  - keymone 8y ago
    Are you fingers equally spaced square shape manipulators? I don’t support having return at all. Statements that are not expressions are a mistake. Syntax irregularities are anti-practical.
mywittyname 8y ago
Try Ruby.
- cutler 8y ago
  Aw, alright then.

cuckcuckspruce 8y ago

Python 3 avoided becoming what Perl 6 has. That alone is a victory.

jandrese 8y ago
Is there even a "production ready" version of Perl 6 yet? It has to be the worst example of production hell for a computer language in history. It's the poster boy for the second system effect.
- lizmat 8y ago
  There has been a production ready version of Rakudo Perl 6 (https://perl6.org https://perl6.org) since Christmas 2015. It has been on a monthly release cycle for years, and a 3-monthly release cycle for Rakudo Star, the "user" distribution (with some bells and whistles added). Cro (https://cro.services https://cro.services) is a set of libraries for building reactive distributed systems. Comma IDE (https://commaide.com https://commaide.com) is an IDE for Perl 6, based on the JetBrains IDEA platform, now in (paid) beta. If you want to keep up-to-date on Perl 6 development, check out the Perl 6 Weekly (https://p6weekly.wordpress.com https://p6weekly.wordpress.com).

nas 8y ago

> The jury is still out on the Python 3 decision, to be honest. It's not. Python 3 has overtaken 2 and there is no stopping migration to it now. Python 3.7 is a lot better than 2.7. Just on memory use alone, 3.7 is massively better. Sure, there will be some hold outs on 2.7 for a long time. That's fine. Also, this is not the say that migration from 2 to 3 was handled well. It wasn't. Python 3.0 should have had backwards compatible features like allowing the 'u' string prefix. Indexing byte strings should have returned length one byte strings. Byte strings should have supported at least a minimal amount of %-style formats. Etc. That has all been mostly resolved and is in the past. Mistakes were made because, shock, the Python core developers are not perfect and didn't foresee all the migration issues. However, there is no way that we are going back and reviving the Python 2.x branch.

TylerE 8y ago
How much momentum was lost in the transition though? I know that with the pain of 3 at the time a lot of people started looking at languages like Go or even Scala.
- lenocinor 8y ago
  Python currently still 4th at https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ . As the most popular scripting language on there by some margin, I'd say they're still doing pretty well.
olooney 8y ago
It was touch and go for a couple of years there but yeah, Python 3 is now well and truly over the hump. The Python 3 Readiness Project now lists [341](http://py3readiness.org/ http://py3readiness.org/) of the 360 most common packages as Python 3 compatible. Even that's underselling it really. For example it lists BeautifulSoup as not converted, but the link goes to BeautifulSoup 3.2.1. However, BeautifulSoup4 works great on Python 3. And for MySQL there's mysqlclient and several others, and since database packages usually follow PEP 249 pretty closely its very easy to switch. So in reality, rather than 341/360, its more like "everything worth converting has been converted." Or just "everything" for short.

pjmlp 8y ago

Well, many embedded developers will never move beyond C89 unless forced to do so. Meanwhile C22 work is ongoing.

llukas 8y ago
> Well, many embedded compilers will never move beyond C89 unless vendor is forced to do so. FTFY
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Not really, many of those developers do have C99 compilers with partial C11 support at their disposal. There are almost no vendors left offering C89 only compilers.