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Worse it becomes an emotional plea, "do the right thing". As if not switching sides to 3.x is a moral issue. And the myth that 3.x is in our best interests or

Worse it becomes an emotional plea, "do the right thing". As if not switching sides to 3.x is a moral issue. And the myth that 3.x is in our best interests or "inevitable". The author is fooled into this even though his own numbers show they can't crack 20% even though 3.0 was released in late 2008. Using those numbers, even if the Python3 community doubles in another 7 years they'll still be at 34%. I think that would be an optimistic outlook as many people are simply finding something else to use instead of move to 3. I'd be as interested in Ruby 3.0 or Go as I would Python3. Many programmers for some reason cannot resist technical churn. To me that's what Python3 is. All things considered not better, not worse. Just different. But with the library issue. My guess is Pyston will catch on and maintain the 2.x line after 2020. Pyston may end up the innovation that Py3 wasn't, but without breaking everyone's code. LLVM JIT compiler with C extension support. It's music to my ears and transitioning from being a Python programmer to a Pyston programmer sounds good. I suspect by 2020 it'll be ready as a spiritual 2.8, and the 80%+ will move to that. Only this core dev team could've achieved defeat from the jaws of success by shooting itself in the face.

Animats 12y ago
The successor to Python 2 may, in practice, be Go. That's the direction Google is going. Google used Python internally for non-speed-critical tasks, but the performance was too low for anything that had to scale. A few years ago Google hired von Rossum, and Google had a project, "Unladen Swallow" to produce a faster Python. It failed.[1] Von Rossum is no longer with Google. Google hired others to develop Go, which seems to be a good language for doing server-side web-related work. It's fast, memory-safe, scales well on multiprocessors, and has lower development costs than C++. That's what Google needed in their business. Google maintains many of the key Go libraries. They're well-exercised production code. This is not the case for Python 3, as I spent a painful month discovering. I have some technical criticisms of Go, but when I write something in Go, it usually works as expected without surprises. You can use Go for important work with confidence. Python 3, six years on, isn't there yet. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unladen_Swallow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unladen_Swallow
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Von Rossum worked on App Engine, he didn't work much on Unladen Swallow. You can see it here: https://code.google.com/p/unladen-swallow/source/list https://code.google.com/p/unladen-swallow/source/list Google hired the Go guys years prior to Unladen Swallow even being an idea, and the first open source versions of Go were available around the time that the Unladen Swallow project plan was put out: http://golang.org/doc/faq#history http://golang.org/doc/faq#history
- BuckRogers 11y ago
  Failing something like Pyston taking over for 2.x, that is my plan. Going from Py2 (what I currently use) to Py3 doesn't really do anything for me at all. There's the constant threat online from people about 'support' and guilt trips, but the support that matters (library support) isn't going away anytime, if ever, with a 80%+ userbase in 2015. So I'm going to stick with Python2, and if I migrate to anything it'll be Go. Though it'll likely just be also using Go. I've already worked through a book on Go a couple years ago. I have my complaints about it, but I also have my complaints about Python. Nothing is perfect, but Go IS really easy to get started with, which is worth a lot to an individual programmer or to a team. I'm not sure it's flexible enough as a drop-in replacement for Python, but if forced it's good enough to completely replace Python, if this Python2/3 debacle isn't resolved. I'm seeing Python as 2 separate communities now. Of course the Python3 diehards see that as the worst-case outcome, since their community is always the short stick. But I think we're here now and it'll remain this way.
eeZi 12y ago
Py2 and Py3 aren't actually that different. And the library ecosystem caught up. I switched one year ago, and I do not regret it. Better Unicode support is great for people like me living in a non-ASCII world, and asyncio (tuplip) has a sizeable async ecosystem now.

Animats 12y ago

The successor to Python 2 may, in practice, be Go. That's the direction Google is going. Google used Python internally for non-speed-critical tasks, but the performance was too low for anything that had to scale. A few years ago Google hired von Rossum, and Google had a project, "Unladen Swallow" to produce a faster Python. It failed.[1] Von Rossum is no longer with Google. Google hired others to develop Go, which seems to be a good language for doing server-side web-related work. It's fast, memory-safe, scales well on multiprocessors, and has lower development costs than C++. That's what Google needed in their business. Google maintains many of the key Go libraries. They're well-exercised production code. This is not the case for Python 3, as I spent a painful month discovering. I have some technical criticisms of Go, but when I write something in Go, it usually works as expected without surprises. You can use Go for important work with confidence. Python 3, six years on, isn't there yet. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unladen_Swallow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unladen_Swallow

maxerickson 11y ago
Von Rossum worked on App Engine, he didn't work much on Unladen Swallow. You can see it here: https://code.google.com/p/unladen-swallow/source/list https://code.google.com/p/unladen-swallow/source/list Google hired the Go guys years prior to Unladen Swallow even being an idea, and the first open source versions of Go were available around the time that the Unladen Swallow project plan was put out: http://golang.org/doc/faq#history http://golang.org/doc/faq#history
BuckRogers 11y ago
Failing something like Pyston taking over for 2.x, that is my plan. Going from Py2 (what I currently use) to Py3 doesn't really do anything for me at all. There's the constant threat online from people about 'support' and guilt trips, but the support that matters (library support) isn't going away anytime, if ever, with a 80%+ userbase in 2015. So I'm going to stick with Python2, and if I migrate to anything it'll be Go. Though it'll likely just be also using Go. I've already worked through a book on Go a couple years ago. I have my complaints about it, but I also have my complaints about Python. Nothing is perfect, but Go IS really easy to get started with, which is worth a lot to an individual programmer or to a team. I'm not sure it's flexible enough as a drop-in replacement for Python, but if forced it's good enough to completely replace Python, if this Python2/3 debacle isn't resolved. I'm seeing Python as 2 separate communities now. Of course the Python3 diehards see that as the worst-case outcome, since their community is always the short stick. But I think we're here now and it'll remain this way.

eeZi 12y ago

Py2 and Py3 aren't actually that different. And the library ecosystem caught up. I switched one year ago, and I do not regret it. Better Unicode support is great for people like me living in a non-ASCII world, and asyncio (tuplip) has a sizeable async ecosystem now.