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The problem with statements like these is people always move the goal posts. If challenged it goes from nobody to talking about the proportions. There are plent

The problem with statements like these is people always move the goal posts. If challenged it goes from nobody to talking about the proportions. There are plenty of people who will use this straight away. Yes, maybe as a proportion but Python has a lot of users developing a lot of different types of applications. Even if initially it's a small proportion, it's not the absolute numbers are large. I guess some of the bellyaching is because there's a feeling that the community and ecosystem of libraries is becoming fragmented -- but the community is large enough to take it and anyone really needing a particular library should be capable of expending the effort to port it or find an alternative. There are plenty of users who don't engage with the community much and/or just use established libraries/the standard library anyway. In conclusion, not everyone is in the same boat as you. Try and see beyond your own nose pleas.

saurik 13y ago
I imagine some of the disappointment is that there is a large community of people using the language ecosystem "Python 2", and that ecosystem seemed to have been prematurely killed in the hope of not just helping the small proportion of people who considered this new language ecosystem "Python 3" valuable, but seemingly in a failed attempt to actively strongarm people into switching: it's like if the people who worked on C++ standardized Rust as "C++14" and indicated that not only were no language inprovements ever coming to the old C++, but that all of the compiler implementaters had given up on it and were unlikely to ever release updates, even to fix bugs: that if people wanted support from the language called "C++" they needed to switch to this new language ecosystem. Sure, the syntax disparity is much smaller between Python 2 and Python 3, but the library semantics are still highly skewed (I mean, if it were just some simple syntax issues everything would have been trivial to port immediately). But really, the key issue is really the language ecosystem: the number of available libraries, the distribution in major operating systems, the cloud hosting options, etc. While these almost look vaguely hopeful for the Python 3 crowd at this point, it took five years of enforced death of Python 2 to strongarm it to even this point, and as it stands it is still weak. Maybe after 5 years of enforced death to C++ compilers someone could also claim a transition to Rust looked hopeful. And again: I understand that for some people this is great: I don't think anyone is actively complaining that Python 3 shouldn't exist, more that it's existence at the detriment of Python 2 snubbed a very large community of people. Like, one could say the same thing to the people who advocate everyone upgrading ASAP, or even ever: "not everyone is in the same boat as you; try to see beyond your own nose please".
- maxerickson 13y ago
  Edit: what was here was wrong so I removed it. Anyway, there have been bug fixes and there will continue to be security related releases of 2.7 for a while still.
- gtaylor 13y ago
  > I understand that for some people this is great: I don't think anyone is actively complaining that Python 3 shouldn't exist, more that it's existence at the detriment of Python 2 snubbed a very large community of people. There's a very simple solution, for those that can't/won't upgrade: Fork it. Work on OldNewPython 2.8. The core devs of Python want to work on Python 3, so that's where we're headed. There's no need to argue technical merits of Python 2 vs 3, the simple fact is that the development momentum is with Python 3 now. Open source is a do-ocracy. Bring together your other like minded devs to work on Python 2 and keep on keeping on. We can't expect the core devs to keep maintaining an old version of Python. A lot of them are doing this for fun or as a hobby.

saurik 13y ago

I imagine some of the disappointment is that there is a large community of people using the language ecosystem "Python 2", and that ecosystem seemed to have been prematurely killed in the hope of not just helping the small proportion of people who considered this new language ecosystem "Python 3" valuable, but seemingly in a failed attempt to actively strongarm people into switching: it's like if the people who worked on C++ standardized Rust as "C++14" and indicated that not only were no language inprovements ever coming to the old C++, but that all of the compiler implementaters had given up on it and were unlikely to ever release updates, even to fix bugs: that if people wanted support from the language called "C++" they needed to switch to this new language ecosystem. Sure, the syntax disparity is much smaller between Python 2 and Python 3, but the library semantics are still highly skewed (I mean, if it were just some simple syntax issues everything would have been trivial to port immediately). But really, the key issue is really the language ecosystem: the number of available libraries, the distribution in major operating systems, the cloud hosting options, etc. While these almost look vaguely hopeful for the Python 3 crowd at this point, it took five years of enforced death of Python 2 to strongarm it to even this point, and as it stands it is still weak. Maybe after 5 years of enforced death to C++ compilers someone could also claim a transition to Rust looked hopeful. And again: I understand that for some people this is great: I don't think anyone is actively complaining that Python 3 shouldn't exist, more that it's existence at the detriment of Python 2 snubbed a very large community of people. Like, one could say the same thing to the people who advocate everyone upgrading ASAP, or even ever: "not everyone is in the same boat as you; try to see beyond your own nose please".

maxerickson 13y ago
Edit: what was here was wrong so I removed it. Anyway, there have been bug fixes and there will continue to be security related releases of 2.7 for a while still.
gtaylor 13y ago
> I understand that for some people this is great: I don't think anyone is actively complaining that Python 3 shouldn't exist, more that it's existence at the detriment of Python 2 snubbed a very large community of people. There's a very simple solution, for those that can't/won't upgrade: Fork it. Work on OldNewPython 2.8. The core devs of Python want to work on Python 3, so that's where we're headed. There's no need to argue technical merits of Python 2 vs 3, the simple fact is that the development momentum is with Python 3 now. Open source is a do-ocracy. Bring together your other like minded devs to work on Python 2 and keep on keeping on. We can't expect the core devs to keep maintaining an old version of Python. A lot of them are doing this for fun or as a hobby.