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The print statement to function didn't hurt migration. Nor did any of the other actual changes. What hurt the migration is a small but loud group of Python deve

The print statement to function didn't hurt migration. Nor did any of the other actual changes. What hurt the migration is a small but loud group of Python developers who think everything in the language was just fine, that not only was Python 3 unnecessary, it was actively bad and signaled a bunch of know-it-all theoretical type people from other languages coming in and taking over their own little corner of the wild west and imposing law and order where it wasn't asked for. Actually, even those people aren't what hobbled the Python migration. What made it such a mess was that the core team didn't tell that crowd to fuck right off and get with the program or get left behind. And even now with 2.7 nearing end of life, those same grumpy curmudgeons hang around web forums and reddit and blogs here and there, giving new people bad advice, complaining about how much better the old days were before unicode and async and types. I even saw someone griping about those new-fangled decorators and how monkeypatching was better. The thing that made a mess out of the transition was the core team trying too hard to coax people who didn't want to move into coming along with them with a small bucket of carrots and no sticks. They tried to pull the bandaid off slowly and it took too long and still hurt like hell.

kstrauser 8y ago
I couldn't agree more. There was a huge amount of wailing that, for instance, Python 3 suddenly made devs care about the difference between text and bytes, when Python 2 had let them happily write broken code without complaining. Yes, you have to write correct code now. Yes, this requires changing some stuff. But yes, this is better for everyone in the (not so) long run.
orangecat 8y ago
The Python 3 transition has taken 10+ years and millions of developer-hours. It is perfectly reasonable to question whether the benefits have been worth the costs, especially when compared to other platforms like JavaScript that have made much greater advancements during that time.

kstrauser 8y ago

I couldn't agree more. There was a huge amount of wailing that, for instance, Python 3 suddenly made devs care about the difference between text and bytes, when Python 2 had let them happily write broken code without complaining. Yes, you have to write correct code now. Yes, this requires changing some stuff. But yes, this is better for everyone in the (not so) long run.

orangecat 8y ago

The Python 3 transition has taken 10+ years and millions of developer-hours. It is perfectly reasonable to question whether the benefits have been worth the costs, especially when compared to other platforms like JavaScript that have made much greater advancements during that time.