6 ms·

Python 3 breaks 'hello world'

12 points by illumen 18y ago

gaius 18y ago
Step away from the keyboard, kid. You're too stupid to own a computer.
trezor 18y ago
I'm not claiming this is the case, but would someone who has followed the Python development care to enlighten the rest of the world about this? With the statement that Python 3 "will break compatibility" and nobody objecting is Python slowly turning PHPesque?
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- dazzawazza 18y ago
  I think everyone who uses Python seriously understands that the 'break', while annoying, is necessary to create a better language. No one really expects 2.6 to be abandoned any time soon (within the next 3 years or so) so there is plenty of time for projects you are dependant on to move over to 3.0. I think the difference between PHP and Python is that the Python community is smaller and less antagonistic toward it's '(benevolent) dictator'. I'm guessing a key difference is that most people (IMHO) that use python are programmers and understand that a little pain now is preferable to a dead language. A lot of PHP users aren't programmers. They are people who admin a PHPBB and for them it was just a huge PITA researching what worked and didn't between PHP4 and 5. Of the 30 or so python packages that my work is dependant on none of them are moving to 3.0 solely and most of them haven't finished moving to 2.6 yet. They all support python 2.4+ I'm really not worried (I am aware that that statement could bite me in the arse within the next year :).
  - mojuba 18y ago
    > a little pain now is preferable to a dead language Who said Python is dying? It's been flourishing since it came out. It almost killed Perl, almost became a de facto standard as a dynamic scripting language, and so many people just fell in love with it. What will actually kill Python is unjustified changes that break all existing code. Or, let's view it as a different language that's simply doomed like every other attempt to "fix" things that actually work. It's that simple: fixing things that work is a waste of time.
    - dazzawazza 18y ago
      No one is saying that python is a dead language, as you say it's flourishing. But a little pain IS preferable to a dead language. While python works it doesn't mean it can't be improved. We are all free to stick with 2.6 if we want to.
- schtog 18y ago
  I don't know what you mean with PHP-esque really but I don't find it to make it messy, on the contrary the whole point seems to be to make Python more consistent and there are well-thought out plans for how to migrate code from one version to the other.
Eliezer 18y ago
NOOOOOOOOOO
tome 18y ago
Well, the course notes should be rewritten to say: print('Hello World') Then it'll work in both Python 2 and 3.
- nuclear_eclipse 18y ago
  Not quite. In Python 2.5: >>> print("hello") hello >>> print("hello","test") ('hello', 'test') In Python 3: >>> print("hello") hello >>> print("hello","test") hello test
babo 18y ago
"What's new in P3K" mentions that print is function at the very top. For existing code there is a nice conversion 2to3 which convert most of the artifact like a charm. It worth to read some documentation before shouting.
jodrellblank 18y ago
Where the article suggests it should be like: >>> help Type help() for interactive help [..]. This sort of (dis)functionality really gets on my nerves. Whenever I hit a 'nix program that does this: $somecmd -h Error. Use --help for help. $somecmd --help {help text} or, in MacOS when I press CMD-C in the terminal instead of CTRL-C and it just beeps at me, but does nothing... Why don't you Just DWIM? Grr.
- shadytrees 18y ago
  As it stands, help is a string. If help does what you suggest, it becomes a keyword. Then it has to go into the parser. Then somebody has to maintain that code. And document it. And the backend code gets larger. If it doesn't become a keyword, it becomes an exception to the rule. Which means you'll have to deal with edge cases where the user tries to fudge with the value of `help`. Does it act like a keyword? Should it have different semantics? Should there be a separate category for it? And then: What about `quit`? And `exit`? The problem with DWIM is that doing what you mean in one case can create doing-what-you-don't-mean in several other cases.
  - jodrellblank 18y ago
    As it stands, help isn't a string - if it was then typing help() would tell you that strings aren't callable. It's a <class site._Helper> So as well as printing that message, it could go into interactive help mode. Since you're only going to want that at the console it could only happen at the console, and since you typed "help" you probably want "help", that would be ... helpful. The real problem with DWIM is that nobody else has the same WIM. (But that's not my problem, because it's all of you who are wrong. ;)
lazyant 18y ago
The print() function and intentionally being backwards incompatible is the first thing Guido (benevolent dictator) says in the release notes: http://docs.python.org/dev/3.0/whatsnew/3.0.html http://docs.python.org/dev/3.0/whatsnew/3.0.html
- nuclear_eclipse 18y ago
  Note that TFA in question was written in September, using an alpha release. There was no "What's New" for 3.0 yet...
delackner 18y ago
Hilariously if you read the comments, several confused people suggest that the problem is just that it is "alpha" software, and of course such simple problems will crop up. Right!

12 points by illumen 18y ago

gaius 18y ago

Step away from the keyboard, kid. You're too stupid to own a computer.

I'm not claiming this is the case, but would someone who has followed the Python development care to enlighten the rest of the world about this? With the statement that Python 3 "will break compatibility" and nobody objecting is Python slowly turning PHPesque?

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
dazzawazza 18y ago
I think everyone who uses Python seriously understands that the 'break', while annoying, is necessary to create a better language. No one really expects 2.6 to be abandoned any time soon (within the next 3 years or so) so there is plenty of time for projects you are dependant on to move over to 3.0. I think the difference between PHP and Python is that the Python community is smaller and less antagonistic toward it's '(benevolent) dictator'. I'm guessing a key difference is that most people (IMHO) that use python are programmers and understand that a little pain now is preferable to a dead language. A lot of PHP users aren't programmers. They are people who admin a PHPBB and for them it was just a huge PITA researching what worked and didn't between PHP4 and 5. Of the 30 or so python packages that my work is dependant on none of them are moving to 3.0 solely and most of them haven't finished moving to 2.6 yet. They all support python 2.4+ I'm really not worried (I am aware that that statement could bite me in the arse within the next year :).
- mojuba 18y ago
  > a little pain now is preferable to a dead language Who said Python is dying? It's been flourishing since it came out. It almost killed Perl, almost became a de facto standard as a dynamic scripting language, and so many people just fell in love with it. What will actually kill Python is unjustified changes that break all existing code. Or, let's view it as a different language that's simply doomed like every other attempt to "fix" things that actually work. It's that simple: fixing things that work is a waste of time.
  - dazzawazza 18y ago
    No one is saying that python is a dead language, as you say it's flourishing. But a little pain IS preferable to a dead language. While python works it doesn't mean it can't be improved. We are all free to stick with 2.6 if we want to.
schtog 18y ago
I don't know what you mean with PHP-esque really but I don't find it to make it messy, on the contrary the whole point seems to be to make Python more consistent and there are well-thought out plans for how to migrate code from one version to the other.

Eliezer 18y ago

NOOOOOOOOOO

tome 18y ago

Well, the course notes should be rewritten to say: print('Hello World') Then it'll work in both Python 2 and 3.

nuclear_eclipse 18y ago
Not quite. In Python 2.5: >>> print("hello") hello >>> print("hello","test") ('hello', 'test') In Python 3: >>> print("hello") hello >>> print("hello","test") hello test

babo 18y ago

"What's new in P3K" mentions that print is function at the very top. For existing code there is a nice conversion 2to3 which convert most of the artifact like a charm. It worth to read some documentation before shouting.

jodrellblank 18y ago

Where the article suggests it should be like: >>> help Type help() for interactive help [..]. This sort of (dis)functionality really gets on my nerves. Whenever I hit a 'nix program that does this: $somecmd -h Error. Use --help for help. $somecmd --help {help text} or, in MacOS when I press CMD-C in the terminal instead of CTRL-C and it just beeps at me, but does nothing... Why don't you Just DWIM? Grr.

shadytrees 18y ago
As it stands, help is a string. If help does what you suggest, it becomes a keyword. Then it has to go into the parser. Then somebody has to maintain that code. And document it. And the backend code gets larger. If it doesn't become a keyword, it becomes an exception to the rule. Which means you'll have to deal with edge cases where the user tries to fudge with the value of `help`. Does it act like a keyword? Should it have different semantics? Should there be a separate category for it? And then: What about `quit`? And `exit`? The problem with DWIM is that doing what you mean in one case can create doing-what-you-don't-mean in several other cases.
- jodrellblank 18y ago
  As it stands, help isn't a string - if it was then typing help() would tell you that strings aren't callable. It's a <class site._Helper> So as well as printing that message, it could go into interactive help mode. Since you're only going to want that at the console it could only happen at the console, and since you typed "help" you probably want "help", that would be ... helpful. The real problem with DWIM is that nobody else has the same WIM. (But that's not my problem, because it's all of you who are wrong. ;)

lazyant 18y ago

The print() function and intentionally being backwards incompatible is the first thing Guido (benevolent dictator) says in the release notes: http://docs.python.org/dev/3.0/whatsnew/3.0.html http://docs.python.org/dev/3.0/whatsnew/3.0.html

nuclear_eclipse 18y ago
Note that TFA in question was written in September, using an alpha release. There was no "What's New" for 3.0 yet...

delackner 18y ago

Hilariously if you read the comments, several confused people suggest that the problem is just that it is "alpha" software, and of course such simple problems will crop up. Right!