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I picked up Python around 2.5 and went through the migration to 3. Although it was not smooth and took a while on the whole, it was very painless for me, and in

by dxdm 11mo ago

I picked up Python around 2.5 and went through the migration to 3. Although it was not smooth and took a while on the whole, it was very painless for me, and in my environment I did not experience it as such a big almost-catastrophe as you describe it. Python is better for it, and personally I'm very grateful for the Unicode compatibility breakage they did. I get that your experience may have been different, and I appreciate that the transition cannot be said to have gone well (despite ending well); but nevertheless I feel that using words like debacle paints an overdramatic picture that suggests an outcome far removed from where Python is today, and it does not leave much linguistic room for the multitude of possible worse occurrences that would truly deserve to be called a debacle. But that's of course just my opinion.

saurik 11mo ago
I guess, in my mind's eye, I see a world in which Python dominated, and that didn't happen: it didn't die the death Perl did, but, in the grand scheme of where it was going -- and even what it had been -- it has become a very niched language: we now only really see it in education, machine learning, and (sometimes) system administration (but even that has been losing to Go). It didn't entirely disappear, and it actually got where it was going (unlike Perl 6), but it seems very strange to say it "ended well"... they squandered a decade on some really bad decisions that they only started to undo around 3.3-3.7, and the ecosystem simply moved on (in some cases quite forcefully, such as Google going to great lengths to get off of Python via Go). What else can we call such a fall from grace? If not somehow a debacle it is certainly a tragedy...
- dxdm 11mo ago
  Maybe I am just in a happy little Python niche, then. I'm saying this in all earnesty. Maybe Python could have been bigger, I don't know. It still seems very present, it did not die, but came out better than before. Given the performance difference between Python and Go, and the rationale given for its invention, I'm not convinced Google would somehow have a chosen Python as their blessed language, as you seem to suggest. Anyway, we seem to have different measuring sticks for things like debacles and tragedies. :)

by dxdm 11mo ago

saurik 11mo ago

I guess, in my mind's eye, I see a world in which Python dominated, and that didn't happen: it didn't die the death Perl did, but, in the grand scheme of where it was going -- and even what it had been -- it has become a very niched language: we now only really see it in education, machine learning, and (sometimes) system administration (but even that has been losing to Go). It didn't entirely disappear, and it actually got where it was going (unlike Perl 6), but it seems very strange to say it "ended well"... they squandered a decade on some really bad decisions that they only started to undo around 3.3-3.7, and the ecosystem simply moved on (in some cases quite forcefully, such as Google going to great lengths to get off of Python via Go). What else can we call such a fall from grace? If not somehow a debacle it is certainly a tragedy...

dxdm 11mo ago
Maybe I am just in a happy little Python niche, then. I'm saying this in all earnesty. Maybe Python could have been bigger, I don't know. It still seems very present, it did not die, but came out better than before. Given the performance difference between Python and Go, and the rationale given for its invention, I'm not convinced Google would somehow have a chosen Python as their blessed language, as you seem to suggest. Anyway, we seem to have different measuring sticks for things like debacles and tragedies. :)