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There are two significant factions in the Python community: the scientific group and the web-dev group. The scientific group is pretty much on board with Pytho

by vph 14y ago

There are two significant factions in the Python community: the scientific group and the web-dev group. The scientific group is pretty much on board with Python 3. Perhaps due to unicode handling intricacies, that the web-dev group ain't exactly on board with Python 3 yet. But this needs to change and it takes leadership. Fortunately, bit and pieces such as webob are Python 3 compatible. And personally, I feel the Python web frameworks need a fresh redesign.

srj55 14y ago
Python 3 support in django is coming soon....!
- jaimebuelta 14y ago
  I think that Django support will probably speed up a lot the Python 3 adoption
symbiotic 14y ago
As a PHP developer I've been waiting for the web-dev group to jump on board with Python 3 before I make the switch. I'm hoping it will be sooner rather than later.
- geekam 14y ago
  Is the difference between 2 and 3 so huge that it is not possible to make a jump?
  - masklinn 14y ago
    It's definitely possible (and not really hard), but I understand the mindset: if you're coming from an other platform, why bother with switching when you can wait a bit and just start with Python 3?
    - slurgfest 14y ago
      Because Python 2.7 is completely mature and production ready and also allows you to write code which runs pretty easily on Python 3. Then you are marking Python 2.7 as deprecated version at the time where before you would have been just getting started. Really this is down to whether you want to do something in Python now, or you want an excuse not to do it in Python for some time. It's not a bad excuse but it's also not a strong reason to wait.
  - symbiotic 14y ago
    Here is my thought process... Regardless of how you feel about PHP, I've spent enough time with it that I can make it work and write good code, quickly. I do want to switch to another language at some point (I'll leave the reasoning for that out of this discussion). Why switch to Python 2.7 if it's going to be old in a year or two? Even if there isn't a huge difference between 2.7 and 3.x it sounds like it would be a nightmare trying to upgrade any of the old work that I would have done in 2.7. So either I've got some projects that will be on 2.7 forever, or I go through the hassle of trying to upgrade. I'd rather just wait and avoid the whole debacle.
    - fayden 14y ago
      There are ways to write Python2 code that will work when you make the switch to Python3. It _is_ a hassle, but it's quite doable. This may not convince you (and I perfectly understand why), but I think it's worth giving Python a shot even if you're fluent in another language.
      - symbiotic 14y ago
        Interesting, I'll look into it!
- slurgfest 14y ago
  I'm setting aside the question of whether or why to switch. I'm also setting aside the possibility of starting to learn now on Python 2.7, which is what I think you should really do assuming you don't intend to procrastinate it ;) Assuming you do want to wait on Python 3 adoption, your timing should depend on the framework you want to use, because effectively each one has its own community and ecosystem, and their adoption is at completely different rates. If Pyramid looks good to you, for example, it already is on board with Python 3. Bottle is on board with Python 3. If you want to use Django, which is what most people will want to do, you should just wait on Django to release a Python 3 version, and Django should be usable on Python 3 within the year. If you want to use Flask (considered the closest analogue of Ruby's Sinatra) then it could take a while.
  - pendext 14y ago
    I see a couple mentions in this thread of Flask taking a while to adopt Python 3. I am relatively new to Flask, could you explain why they are seemingly behind things in regards to Python 3?
    - ville 14y ago
      The Flask author's post about issues he has faced with Python 3 might give some insight to that: http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2011/12/7/thoughts-on-python3/ http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2011/12/7/thoughts-on-python3/
    - batista 14y ago
      Few core developers (mainly, one, Armin) that couldn't be bothered enough. It's a volunteer project after all. He did write about the unicode problems with the Python 3 changes and the need for an improved WSGI spec (heck, he even co-wrote the unicode literal change PEP). But after the new WSGI spec was out, and the u thing was already implemented in 3.3 pre-release, there was no much motion in Flask, whereas Pyramid, Django and others have already started work. Even the "When will Flask support Python 3" document has not updated and is 2 years out of date in it's contents.
    - mmariani 14y ago
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
wwwtyro 14y ago
I work in both camps, and I always felt it was the web developers that were better about moving on to 3. Scientists in general are loathe to risk breaking well-tested code for the sake of new features. In my research group, in fact, we've just barely moved on to 2.7 from 2.4! I doubt there will be any motivation at all for moving to 3 any time soon.
- vph 14y ago
  Research software typically have a very small user base and can quickly become out-of-date, so there's no great incentives for current software packages to upgrade. But I'm talking about the developer community of scientific Python, not the user community. The developer community includes such things as numpy, scipy, matplotlib, etc. are pretty much Python 3 compatible. This makes it easy for new scientific projects to jump on board with Python 3.
  - w1ntermute 14y ago
    Yeah, a lot of research software in academia is written by grad students with no formal CS education who're just interested in completing their dissertation and graduating. After they've graduated and left, the codebase just languishes until the next grad student comes along, who spends a couple months trying to figure out all the spaghetti code and ridiculous hacks used by the previous student to complete their thesis in the fastest time possible. After this process repeats itself 3 or 4 times, the codebase is pretty much useless and has to be thrown out.
    - denzil_correa 14y ago
      > a lot of research software in academia is written by grad students with no formal CS education Are you sure? Because that sounds like an complete oxymoron. You probably may have meant something else. Would you like to clarify on why grad students lack formal CS education?
      - w1ntermute 14y ago
denzil_correa 14y ago
> The scientific group is pretty much on board with Python 3. Ah .. NO! I can assure you that we are still stuck with Python 2.x (2.7 to be more precise). I am not too sure the others would have moved either.
- takluyver 14y ago
  There is movement, though - lots of the core stuff is already ported to Python 3, and once matplotlib 1.2 comes out (any day now), it's quite feasible to do serious work with Python 3.
- ak217 14y ago
  Can you list the reasons?
  - denzil_correa 14y ago
    I deal with a lot of text data so I use NLTK for Natural Language Processing. In addition, maptplot lib for publication quality figures and graphs. I don't really have a motivation to shift to Python 3.
tbatterii 14y ago
http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3333/ http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3333/ Last-Modified: 2011-01-16 09:57:25 +0000 (Sun, 16 Jan 2011) ... Status: Final ... Created: 26-Sep-2010 Until this was made final(January 2011), web frameworks that use the wsgi spec had no python 3 path short of ditching the wsgi spec. Now that it is final, there is a path to python 3 for web-dev. Cherrpy got there first I think. Pyramid/Webob got there, and others as well, and I'm sure Django will get there soon enough. I'd say web-dev adoption of python 3 has been pretty swift.
- maaku 14y ago
  Django has unofficially supported python 3 for a year.
  - bobwaycott 14y ago
    Wasn't experimental support only announced just over a month ago? https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2012/aug/19/experimental-python-3-support/ https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2012/aug/19/experimenta...
    - takluyver 14y ago
      There were unofficial versions of Django (forks, but not in the hostile sense) ported to Python 3 before that. The announcement marks the work being done in the main Django codebase, meaning that the next release will work on Python 3.
  - tbatterii 14y ago
    so, for about as long as pep 3333 has been approved. that was my point. No web framework that uses wsgi(pretty much all of them) were going to move to python 3.X without it.
zokier 14y ago
I believe that the lack of WSGI held web-dev group back for a long time. PEP3333 (WSGI for Py3k) was finalized in early 2011, over two years after the release of 3.0.
cookiecaper 14y ago
Have you looked at Pyramid? It's pretty awesome, really the ideal framework philosophy in my opinion (i.e., actually a framework instead of attempting to be a crappy domain-specific language/replacement standard library). It's also Python 3.x compatible and has been for several months (they replaced the one library they had been holding out for). I gave Django a couple of truly honest tries, but I just couldn't bring myself to tolerate it. Pyramid is by far the best.
toyg 14y ago
> There are two significant factions in the Python community: the scientific group and the web-dev group. You forget the animation group. And the hardware/embedded group (Raspberry-Pi, anyone?). And the C-wrapper-writing group. And the sysadmin group. And and and... The Python ecosystem is very large and diverse. That's part of its strength, and part of its weakness as well (it's very difficult to "herd" all these people, as this 3k migration has shown), but don't make the error of reducing it to the most vocal sectors -- they're not necessarily the most significant ones.

by vph 14y ago

srj55 14y ago

Python 3 support in django is coming soon....!

jaimebuelta 14y ago
I think that Django support will probably speed up a lot the Python 3 adoption

symbiotic 14y ago

As a PHP developer I've been waiting for the web-dev group to jump on board with Python 3 before I make the switch. I'm hoping it will be sooner rather than later.

geekam 14y ago
Is the difference between 2 and 3 so huge that it is not possible to make a jump?
- masklinn 14y ago
  It's definitely possible (and not really hard), but I understand the mindset: if you're coming from an other platform, why bother with switching when you can wait a bit and just start with Python 3?
  - slurgfest 14y ago
    Because Python 2.7 is completely mature and production ready and also allows you to write code which runs pretty easily on Python 3. Then you are marking Python 2.7 as deprecated version at the time where before you would have been just getting started. Really this is down to whether you want to do something in Python now, or you want an excuse not to do it in Python for some time. It's not a bad excuse but it's also not a strong reason to wait.
- symbiotic 14y ago
  Here is my thought process... Regardless of how you feel about PHP, I've spent enough time with it that I can make it work and write good code, quickly. I do want to switch to another language at some point (I'll leave the reasoning for that out of this discussion). Why switch to Python 2.7 if it's going to be old in a year or two? Even if there isn't a huge difference between 2.7 and 3.x it sounds like it would be a nightmare trying to upgrade any of the old work that I would have done in 2.7. So either I've got some projects that will be on 2.7 forever, or I go through the hassle of trying to upgrade. I'd rather just wait and avoid the whole debacle.
  - fayden 14y ago
    There are ways to write Python2 code that will work when you make the switch to Python3. It _is_ a hassle, but it's quite doable. This may not convince you (and I perfectly understand why), but I think it's worth giving Python a shot even if you're fluent in another language.
    - symbiotic 14y ago
      Interesting, I'll look into it!
slurgfest 14y ago
I'm setting aside the question of whether or why to switch. I'm also setting aside the possibility of starting to learn now on Python 2.7, which is what I think you should really do assuming you don't intend to procrastinate it ;) Assuming you do want to wait on Python 3 adoption, your timing should depend on the framework you want to use, because effectively each one has its own community and ecosystem, and their adoption is at completely different rates. If Pyramid looks good to you, for example, it already is on board with Python 3. Bottle is on board with Python 3. If you want to use Django, which is what most people will want to do, you should just wait on Django to release a Python 3 version, and Django should be usable on Python 3 within the year. If you want to use Flask (considered the closest analogue of Ruby's Sinatra) then it could take a while.
- pendext 14y ago
  I see a couple mentions in this thread of Flask taking a while to adopt Python 3. I am relatively new to Flask, could you explain why they are seemingly behind things in regards to Python 3?
  - ville 14y ago
    The Flask author's post about issues he has faced with Python 3 might give some insight to that: http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2011/12/7/thoughts-on-python3/ http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2011/12/7/thoughts-on-python3/
  - batista 14y ago
    Few core developers (mainly, one, Armin) that couldn't be bothered enough. It's a volunteer project after all. He did write about the unicode problems with the Python 3 changes and the need for an improved WSGI spec (heck, he even co-wrote the unicode literal change PEP). But after the new WSGI spec was out, and the u thing was already implemented in 3.3 pre-release, there was no much motion in Flask, whereas Pyramid, Django and others have already started work. Even the "When will Flask support Python 3" document has not updated and is 2 years out of date in it's contents.
  - mmariani 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

wwwtyro 14y ago

I work in both camps, and I always felt it was the web developers that were better about moving on to 3. Scientists in general are loathe to risk breaking well-tested code for the sake of new features. In my research group, in fact, we've just barely moved on to 2.7 from 2.4! I doubt there will be any motivation at all for moving to 3 any time soon.

vph 14y ago
Research software typically have a very small user base and can quickly become out-of-date, so there's no great incentives for current software packages to upgrade. But I'm talking about the developer community of scientific Python, not the user community. The developer community includes such things as numpy, scipy, matplotlib, etc. are pretty much Python 3 compatible. This makes it easy for new scientific projects to jump on board with Python 3.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  Yeah, a lot of research software in academia is written by grad students with no formal CS education who're just interested in completing their dissertation and graduating. After they've graduated and left, the codebase just languishes until the next grad student comes along, who spends a couple months trying to figure out all the spaghetti code and ridiculous hacks used by the previous student to complete their thesis in the fastest time possible. After this process repeats itself 3 or 4 times, the codebase is pretty much useless and has to be thrown out.
  - denzil_correa 14y ago
    > a lot of research software in academia is written by grad students with no formal CS education Are you sure? Because that sounds like an complete oxymoron. You probably may have meant something else. Would you like to clarify on why grad students lack formal CS education?
    - w1ntermute 14y ago

denzil_correa 14y ago

> The scientific group is pretty much on board with Python 3. Ah .. NO! I can assure you that we are still stuck with Python 2.x (2.7 to be more precise). I am not too sure the others would have moved either.

takluyver 14y ago
There is movement, though - lots of the core stuff is already ported to Python 3, and once matplotlib 1.2 comes out (any day now), it's quite feasible to do serious work with Python 3.
ak217 14y ago
Can you list the reasons?
- denzil_correa 14y ago
  I deal with a lot of text data so I use NLTK for Natural Language Processing. In addition, maptplot lib for publication quality figures and graphs. I don't really have a motivation to shift to Python 3.

tbatterii 14y ago

http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3333/ http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3333/ Last-Modified: 2011-01-16 09:57:25 +0000 (Sun, 16 Jan 2011) ... Status: Final ... Created: 26-Sep-2010 Until this was made final(January 2011), web frameworks that use the wsgi spec had no python 3 path short of ditching the wsgi spec. Now that it is final, there is a path to python 3 for web-dev. Cherrpy got there first I think. Pyramid/Webob got there, and others as well, and I'm sure Django will get there soon enough. I'd say web-dev adoption of python 3 has been pretty swift.

maaku 14y ago
Django has unofficially supported python 3 for a year.
- bobwaycott 14y ago
  Wasn't experimental support only announced just over a month ago? https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2012/aug/19/experimental-python-3-support/ https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2012/aug/19/experimenta...
  - takluyver 14y ago
    There were unofficial versions of Django (forks, but not in the hostile sense) ported to Python 3 before that. The announcement marks the work being done in the main Django codebase, meaning that the next release will work on Python 3.
- tbatterii 14y ago
  so, for about as long as pep 3333 has been approved. that was my point. No web framework that uses wsgi(pretty much all of them) were going to move to python 3.X without it.

zokier 14y ago

I believe that the lack of WSGI held web-dev group back for a long time. PEP3333 (WSGI for Py3k) was finalized in early 2011, over two years after the release of 3.0.

cookiecaper 14y ago

Have you looked at Pyramid? It's pretty awesome, really the ideal framework philosophy in my opinion (i.e., actually a framework instead of attempting to be a crappy domain-specific language/replacement standard library). It's also Python 3.x compatible and has been for several months (they replaced the one library they had been holding out for). I gave Django a couple of truly honest tries, but I just couldn't bring myself to tolerate it. Pyramid is by far the best.

toyg 14y ago

> There are two significant factions in the Python community: the scientific group and the web-dev group. You forget the animation group. And the hardware/embedded group (Raspberry-Pi, anyone?). And the C-wrapper-writing group. And the sysadmin group. And and and... The Python ecosystem is very large and diverse. That's part of its strength, and part of its weakness as well (it's very difficult to "herd" all these people, as this 3k migration has shown), but don't make the error of reducing it to the most vocal sectors -- they're not necessarily the most significant ones.