4 ms·

Will python 3 ever gain critical adoption?

11 points by clutchski 17y ago

teilo 17y ago
This topic has been beaten to death by impatient people who have no recollection or knowledge of the history of language adoption.
- sophacles 17y ago
  Further, people like GVR say things like "In a decade we figure python 3 will be pretty widespread", and "Python 3 isn't really ready for primetime yet, don't use it". Is it really a groundbreaking blog post to mention that people aren't using it now, and that it doesn't work quite the way author expected. Of course the original author also claimed Python 3 is attempting to maintain some backwards compatibility based on a module which interfaces a system call. And then complains that it should just be a clean break from the past. And after that complains that the new thing isnt the old thing. If that confuses you, don't worry I'm confused too.
- kwantam 17y ago
  Right. Anyway, we first have to settle the question "will LISP ever get critical adoption?" :) (I love LISP. I'm trying to point out that "critical adoption" doesn't seem to be a very important or measurable thing.)
  - adamc 17y ago
    The folks in comp.lang.lisp seem critical enough to me.
- fnid 17y ago
  Do you have any resources for learning about such history? I'd be quite an interesting read I think.
  - teilo 17y ago
    In this case I am my own resource, having been a programmer for some 25 years, and observed the slow, but steady adoption of many languages. The wishlist for 3.0, PEP 3100, was created in August, 2004. PEP 3000 was created on April 5, 2006, and marked the beginning of the development process. A year and a half later, 3.0 was released, and it hasn't even been a year since.
smanek 17y ago
I think Python 3 suffers from attempting to be compatible with Python 2. It should have been a clean break with major repairs and reconstruction, as the original Python 3000 was intended to be. Hang the expense, let's make this language _right_, and Python 2 be damned. That worked really well for Perl 6 ;-)
- SwellJoe 17y ago
  I think I detect a hint of sarcasm. We don't actually know about Perl 6 yet. It's still got a few more months before it's feature complete enough for use in any general case (and performance will probably take another year or two after that to come up to snuff). But, I strongly suspect that both Perl 6 and Python 3 will be blips on the radar of language history (even while I expect to write quite a bit of code in both before then), as JavaScript will take the place of both for a large class of problems. But it'll be seven to ten years before that shift becomes apparent.
  - DenisM 17y ago
    For that to happen we would have to have all the rich libraries and interops for javascript. Who could do such a thing?
    - SwellJoe 17y ago
      Who, indeed...
  - chromatic 17y ago
    > JavaScript will take the place of both for a large class of problems. But it'll be seven to ten years before that shift becomes apparent. I'd believe that more if ECMAScript 4 hadn't fallen apart. I'm familiar with the PHP argument that design quality in a language doesn't necessarily harm adoption, but you do need some sort of extensibility to program more than a couple of thousand lines of code.
    - SwellJoe 17y ago

11 points by clutchski 17y ago

teilo 17y ago

This topic has been beaten to death by impatient people who have no recollection or knowledge of the history of language adoption.

sophacles 17y ago
Further, people like GVR say things like "In a decade we figure python 3 will be pretty widespread", and "Python 3 isn't really ready for primetime yet, don't use it". Is it really a groundbreaking blog post to mention that people aren't using it now, and that it doesn't work quite the way author expected. Of course the original author also claimed Python 3 is attempting to maintain some backwards compatibility based on a module which interfaces a system call. And then complains that it should just be a clean break from the past. And after that complains that the new thing isnt the old thing. If that confuses you, don't worry I'm confused too.
kwantam 17y ago
Right. Anyway, we first have to settle the question "will LISP ever get critical adoption?" :) (I love LISP. I'm trying to point out that "critical adoption" doesn't seem to be a very important or measurable thing.)
- adamc 17y ago
  The folks in comp.lang.lisp seem critical enough to me.
fnid 17y ago
Do you have any resources for learning about such history? I'd be quite an interesting read I think.
- teilo 17y ago
  In this case I am my own resource, having been a programmer for some 25 years, and observed the slow, but steady adoption of many languages. The wishlist for 3.0, PEP 3100, was created in August, 2004. PEP 3000 was created on April 5, 2006, and marked the beginning of the development process. A year and a half later, 3.0 was released, and it hasn't even been a year since.

smanek 17y ago

I think Python 3 suffers from attempting to be compatible with Python 2. It should have been a clean break with major repairs and reconstruction, as the original Python 3000 was intended to be. Hang the expense, let's make this language _right_, and Python 2 be damned. That worked really well for Perl 6 ;-)

SwellJoe 17y ago
I think I detect a hint of sarcasm. We don't actually know about Perl 6 yet. It's still got a few more months before it's feature complete enough for use in any general case (and performance will probably take another year or two after that to come up to snuff). But, I strongly suspect that both Perl 6 and Python 3 will be blips on the radar of language history (even while I expect to write quite a bit of code in both before then), as JavaScript will take the place of both for a large class of problems. But it'll be seven to ten years before that shift becomes apparent.
- DenisM 17y ago
  For that to happen we would have to have all the rich libraries and interops for javascript. Who could do such a thing?
  - SwellJoe 17y ago
    Who, indeed...
- chromatic 17y ago
  > JavaScript will take the place of both for a large class of problems. But it'll be seven to ten years before that shift becomes apparent. I'd believe that more if ECMAScript 4 hadn't fallen apart. I'm familiar with the PHP argument that design quality in a language doesn't necessarily harm adoption, but you do need some sort of extensibility to program more than a couple of thousand lines of code.
  - SwellJoe 17y ago