7 ms·

I've been using Python 3.4 (and now 3.5) for development and couldn't been any happier. The async features, specifically, are amazing. When starting a new proj

I've been using Python 3.4 (and now 3.5) for development and couldn't been any happier. The async features, specifically, are amazing. When starting a new project from scratch, I see no reason NOT to use python 3. Maybe if a few libs you depend heavily on are still not ported. Even in that case, though, it might be a good idea to start on Python 3. First because most libraries are already ported[1], and second, you could try porting that specific lib, or maybe running it as a separate service using python 2. I guess the problem remains about maintaining big, Python 2-based programs. [1] - https://python3wos.appspot.com/ https://python3wos.appspot.com/

zephyrfalcon 11y ago
"""When starting a new project from scratch, I see no reason NOT to use python 3. Maybe if a few libs you depend heavily on are still not ported.""" wxPython comes to mind... :-/ Also PyGame, although it seems that there are now development releases for 3.x.
- toyg 11y ago
  It's 2015 and you still rely on wxPython? You probably have bigger problems than the 3.x transition.
  - ptx 11y ago
    Which cross-platform native desktop GUI toolkit would you recommend instead?
    - colincsl 11y ago
      I assume he's referring to Qt.
      - vetinari 11y ago
        PyQT is GPL3+commercial. PySide is Qt4. GKT3 looks ugly outside Linux. Tk looks obsolete everywhere. wxPython is Python 2 and I think GTK2 on Linux. Basically, there is no usable, modern cross-platform GUI toolkit for Python right now.
        scrollaway 11y ago
        PyQt is very much usable. It's GPL3 but if you're using it in commercial projects, you shouldn't just pinch your nose because you have to get a commercial license. Besides, PySide is porting to Qt5 too.
        vetinari 11y ago
        > PyQt is very much usable. It's GPL3 but if you're using it in commercial projects, you shouldn't just pinch your nose because you have to get a commercial license. But I do and thousands of other people do as well. Today, the value-add is somewhere else, not in language bindings for GUI toolkits.
        scrollaway 11y ago
        No offense to whatever it is you work on, but if you are a commercial project and: - Can't comply with GPL3 and make your code compatible with the license - Can't afford to pay for a commercial license - Can't use a different language, such as C++, which has alternate offers Then the problem is on your side, because either your business model is wrong or you're simply being cheap. You're not entitled to a free GUI toolkit for no good reason.
        vetinari 11y ago
        The measure is value for money. For 350 GBP (=500 EUR), you can have Intellij Idea. When you ask your boss for a budget for Nx500 (N=number of developers), it is a huge difference, if you ask that for language bindings for GUI toolkit, or IDE. The language and GUI toolkits are both free, the glue between them is not, and that damages them both. How many commercial PyQt apps have you seen in the wild? Exactly. Imagine, if someone asked money for XAML for C#... or for JavaFX. What it would do with their adaptation in projects?
      - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
        I assumed he was just trolling.
- napsterbr 11y ago
  Project Phoenix (http://wiki.wxpython.org/ProjectPhoenix http://wiki.wxpython.org/ProjectPhoenix) seems promising. Have you tried it or do you know its status?
  - Veedrac 11y ago
    IIRC, I recall finding a post claiming it was stable enough for production use. Another post I found just now[1] suggests I am probably on the right lines. [1]: http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.wxpython/103221 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.wxpython/103221
- agentultra 11y ago
  There are efforts being made to port Pygame as you mention but there's also the option of not using Pygame. I've written small games and OpenGL demos using PySDL2 and PyOpenGL in Python 3. It works rather well.
- Programmatic 11y ago
  Twisted too: https://twistedmatrix.com/trac/milestone/Python-3.x https://twistedmatrix.com/trac/milestone/Python-3.x Twisted and wxPython are a great combo and will keep me on 2.7 as long as they are not ported.
  - sergiosgc 11y ago
    Isn't twisted largely superseded by asyncio? https://docs.python.org/3/library/asyncio.html https://docs.python.org/3/library/asyncio.html I had to build a simple LDAP proxy recently, looked at twisted and asyncio and went with asyncio/python3. For that use-case, it was a perfect choice.
- Veedrac 11y ago
  wxPython largely[1] supports Python 3. PyGame has worked on Python 3 for ages. Looking at [2] suggests it's from at least since the start of 2012. [1]: http://wxpython.org/Phoenix/docs/html/classic_vs_phoenix.html http://wxpython.org/Phoenix/docs/html/classic_vs_phoenix.htm... [2]: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/python-pygame-hg/ https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/python-pygame-hg/
  - joshuapants 11y ago
    Pygame supports Python 3 in development releases. If you try to grab releases from their site they're something like 6 years old.
philipn 11y ago
I'm having the exact same experience! I just started using Python 3.4 (soon 3.5) for a new, major project and I'm pretty excited about it. I expected to find a bunch of roadblocks -- like being in a parallel universe or something. But, well, everything totally works! The only package I found that didn't work with our Python 3 infrastructure was Fabric, but that's really easy to spin out (and will be fixed soon). There's really no reason to not use Python 3 for (almost) all new projects at this point. It's exciting! I expect engineers who're used to developing in Python 3 will start to feel embarrassed that they're still running 2, and we'll port over all of those internal codebases (like at Dropbox :P).
- spookylukey 11y ago
  How did you replace Fabric? I've hacked things together with some branches of Fabric + devs that just about work on Python 3, but it's not really satisfactory.
  - Xixi 11y ago
    You rarely have straight dependencies on fabric from your app though. Personally I simply treat it as a command line tool, and `pip install` it system wide. It just happened to have been written in Python 2, and to require script files written in Python 2, but it's orthogonal to the apps/scripts I write with Python 3. Maybe your use case is different.
  - bjacobel 11y ago
    I replaced it with Ansible when I was doing a 2 to 3 transition about a year ago. It wasn't easy, but learning a real infrastructure automation tool (which Fabric is not) was worth it.
    - arturhoo 11y ago
      I thought Ansible wasn't ported to Python 3 [0] and actually had a lot of weird bugs when I last tried to use it. It is one of the few reasons I keep Python 2 installed on my laptop. [0]: http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/faq.html#how-do-i-handle-python-pathing-not-having-a-python-2-x-in-usr-bin-python-on-a-remote-machine http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/faq.html#how-do-i-handle-pyt...
wiz21 11y ago
Moved a rather big, produciton running, project (100000 LOC) recently. Was not easy but now I've this very warm, conforting feeling, that if something happens in the future, I'll be ready for it :-) (now considering the adoption rate of P3, I'd say the future is, well, rather distant :-)) For me unicode was the reason to switch to 3, not everybody lives in an english-only world :-)
derekp7 11y ago
I can think of one reason for using Python 2 -- if you are creating a project that you want to share with others, there are a lot of enterprise systems that are still on Python 2.x. I've had the experience a number of times of finding a program that seems to do exactly what I want, but I can't deploy it on my production servers because they are all running RHEL 6 with Python 2.6. Of course, it is possible to install multiple versions side-by-side, and edit the scripts so they all start with #!/usr/local/bin/python3 or something like that, but it is just another barrier of entry. Not to mention that then there are most likely a bunch of additional modules that have to be tracked down to get something to work. (Actually, come to think of it, this really isn't a python specific issue, this is really a general plea that if you are making something that is geared toward sysadmins, make sure that there is an easy enough installation method available for at least the currently supported versions of RHEL/Centos, Ubuntu LTS, and Suse Enterprise).
- pekk 11y ago
  The implication that you cannot use Python 3 "if you are creating a project that you want to share with others" is false. Python 3 code is routinely shared and used. There are a lot of enterprise systems that are still on COBOL, but that wouldn't make it any less ridiculous to say that you can't use Python if you are creating a project that you want to share with others.
- Spiritus 11y ago
  Knock yourself out: https://www.softwarecollections.org/en/scls/rhscl/rh-python34/ https://www.softwarecollections.org/en/scls/rhscl/rh-python3...
- takeda 11y ago
  That's a really poor argument. In addition to what others said, if you write code for python 3 making it compatible with python2.7 is relatively painless task (from my own experience) due to Python 2.7 having py3 functionality back ported. Regarding python 2.6 this was discontinued back in 2013, as far as I know all redhat versions that used 2.6 are no longer supported unless you're paying for extended support. So I'm not convinced it is a good excuse. Also if you use Java for example and you want to use JDK7 or JDK8 it doesn't matter that RH distro uses old version you'll find a proper RPM (or build one) to use it.
compostor42 11y ago
Same here. It really wasn't that long ago that I was sticking with Python 2 and recommending to my managers that new projects be started with Python 2. (Yes, I know, I was part of the problem) These days, I have few reservations about starting new projects with Python 3. It has become my new default.
skizm 11y ago
I still use python 2 because I'm not the best programmer and most stack overflow answers are python 2 based (although more and more are for both now-a-days). I wouldn't be opposed to using python 3, but see no real reason to do so.
- odonnellryan 11y ago
  That's valid, but I don't think there are many questions that don't apply to both languages. I'd bet most times you will just have to change range() and print(). The difference in the two versions isn't too extreme!
- takeda 11y ago
  Man I hate this argument so much. People make it look like those are two completely different languages, even though there are actually very minor differences. You'll realize it once you'll start using python 3. Also py3 is much easier to master for a novice because it is much more consistent and no longer has some special cases. For example if you're dividing a number you no longer need to convert one variable to be float in order to get a decimal. There is no int and long types, just int etc.
odonnellryan 11y ago
Can you give me an example of when you used async in Python? I haven't seen a good one. Thanks!

zephyrfalcon 11y ago

"""When starting a new project from scratch, I see no reason NOT to use python 3. Maybe if a few libs you depend heavily on are still not ported.""" wxPython comes to mind... :-/ Also PyGame, although it seems that there are now development releases for 3.x.

toyg 11y ago
It's 2015 and you still rely on wxPython? You probably have bigger problems than the 3.x transition.
- ptx 11y ago
  Which cross-platform native desktop GUI toolkit would you recommend instead?
  - colincsl 11y ago
    I assume he's referring to Qt.
    - vetinari 11y ago
      PyQT is GPL3+commercial. PySide is Qt4. GKT3 looks ugly outside Linux. Tk looks obsolete everywhere. wxPython is Python 2 and I think GTK2 on Linux. Basically, there is no usable, modern cross-platform GUI toolkit for Python right now.
      - scrollaway 11y ago
        PyQt is very much usable. It's GPL3 but if you're using it in commercial projects, you shouldn't just pinch your nose because you have to get a commercial license. Besides, PySide is porting to Qt5 too.
        vetinari 11y ago
        > PyQt is very much usable. It's GPL3 but if you're using it in commercial projects, you shouldn't just pinch your nose because you have to get a commercial license. But I do and thousands of other people do as well. Today, the value-add is somewhere else, not in language bindings for GUI toolkits.
        scrollaway 11y ago
        No offense to whatever it is you work on, but if you are a commercial project and: - Can't comply with GPL3 and make your code compatible with the license - Can't afford to pay for a commercial license - Can't use a different language, such as C++, which has alternate offers Then the problem is on your side, because either your business model is wrong or you're simply being cheap. You're not entitled to a free GUI toolkit for no good reason.
        vetinari 11y ago
        The measure is value for money. For 350 GBP (=500 EUR), you can have Intellij Idea. When you ask your boss for a budget for Nx500 (N=number of developers), it is a huge difference, if you ask that for language bindings for GUI toolkit, or IDE. The language and GUI toolkits are both free, the glue between them is not, and that damages them both. How many commercial PyQt apps have you seen in the wild? Exactly. Imagine, if someone asked money for XAML for C#... or for JavaFX. What it would do with their adaptation in projects?
    - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
      I assumed he was just trolling.
napsterbr 11y ago
Project Phoenix (http://wiki.wxpython.org/ProjectPhoenix http://wiki.wxpython.org/ProjectPhoenix) seems promising. Have you tried it or do you know its status?
- Veedrac 11y ago
  IIRC, I recall finding a post claiming it was stable enough for production use. Another post I found just now[1] suggests I am probably on the right lines. [1]: http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.wxpython/103221 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.wxpython/103221
agentultra 11y ago
There are efforts being made to port Pygame as you mention but there's also the option of not using Pygame. I've written small games and OpenGL demos using PySDL2 and PyOpenGL in Python 3. It works rather well.
Programmatic 11y ago
Twisted too: https://twistedmatrix.com/trac/milestone/Python-3.x https://twistedmatrix.com/trac/milestone/Python-3.x Twisted and wxPython are a great combo and will keep me on 2.7 as long as they are not ported.
- sergiosgc 11y ago
  Isn't twisted largely superseded by asyncio? https://docs.python.org/3/library/asyncio.html https://docs.python.org/3/library/asyncio.html I had to build a simple LDAP proxy recently, looked at twisted and asyncio and went with asyncio/python3. For that use-case, it was a perfect choice.
Veedrac 11y ago
wxPython largely[1] supports Python 3. PyGame has worked on Python 3 for ages. Looking at [2] suggests it's from at least since the start of 2012. [1]: http://wxpython.org/Phoenix/docs/html/classic_vs_phoenix.html http://wxpython.org/Phoenix/docs/html/classic_vs_phoenix.htm... [2]: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/python-pygame-hg/ https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/python-pygame-hg/
- joshuapants 11y ago
  Pygame supports Python 3 in development releases. If you try to grab releases from their site they're something like 6 years old.

philipn 11y ago

I'm having the exact same experience! I just started using Python 3.4 (soon 3.5) for a new, major project and I'm pretty excited about it. I expected to find a bunch of roadblocks -- like being in a parallel universe or something. But, well, everything totally works! The only package I found that didn't work with our Python 3 infrastructure was Fabric, but that's really easy to spin out (and will be fixed soon). There's really no reason to not use Python 3 for (almost) all new projects at this point. It's exciting! I expect engineers who're used to developing in Python 3 will start to feel embarrassed that they're still running 2, and we'll port over all of those internal codebases (like at Dropbox :P).

spookylukey 11y ago
How did you replace Fabric? I've hacked things together with some branches of Fabric + devs that just about work on Python 3, but it's not really satisfactory.
- Xixi 11y ago
  You rarely have straight dependencies on fabric from your app though. Personally I simply treat it as a command line tool, and `pip install` it system wide. It just happened to have been written in Python 2, and to require script files written in Python 2, but it's orthogonal to the apps/scripts I write with Python 3. Maybe your use case is different.
- bjacobel 11y ago
  I replaced it with Ansible when I was doing a 2 to 3 transition about a year ago. It wasn't easy, but learning a real infrastructure automation tool (which Fabric is not) was worth it.
  - arturhoo 11y ago
    I thought Ansible wasn't ported to Python 3 [0] and actually had a lot of weird bugs when I last tried to use it. It is one of the few reasons I keep Python 2 installed on my laptop. [0]: http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/faq.html#how-do-i-handle-python-pathing-not-having-a-python-2-x-in-usr-bin-python-on-a-remote-machine http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/faq.html#how-do-i-handle-pyt...

wiz21 11y ago

Moved a rather big, produciton running, project (100000 LOC) recently. Was not easy but now I've this very warm, conforting feeling, that if something happens in the future, I'll be ready for it :-) (now considering the adoption rate of P3, I'd say the future is, well, rather distant :-)) For me unicode was the reason to switch to 3, not everybody lives in an english-only world :-)

derekp7 11y ago

I can think of one reason for using Python 2 -- if you are creating a project that you want to share with others, there are a lot of enterprise systems that are still on Python 2.x. I've had the experience a number of times of finding a program that seems to do exactly what I want, but I can't deploy it on my production servers because they are all running RHEL 6 with Python 2.6. Of course, it is possible to install multiple versions side-by-side, and edit the scripts so they all start with #!/usr/local/bin/python3 or something like that, but it is just another barrier of entry. Not to mention that then there are most likely a bunch of additional modules that have to be tracked down to get something to work. (Actually, come to think of it, this really isn't a python specific issue, this is really a general plea that if you are making something that is geared toward sysadmins, make sure that there is an easy enough installation method available for at least the currently supported versions of RHEL/Centos, Ubuntu LTS, and Suse Enterprise).

pekk 11y ago
The implication that you cannot use Python 3 "if you are creating a project that you want to share with others" is false. Python 3 code is routinely shared and used. There are a lot of enterprise systems that are still on COBOL, but that wouldn't make it any less ridiculous to say that you can't use Python if you are creating a project that you want to share with others.
Spiritus 11y ago
Knock yourself out: https://www.softwarecollections.org/en/scls/rhscl/rh-python34/ https://www.softwarecollections.org/en/scls/rhscl/rh-python3...
takeda 11y ago
That's a really poor argument. In addition to what others said, if you write code for python 3 making it compatible with python2.7 is relatively painless task (from my own experience) due to Python 2.7 having py3 functionality back ported. Regarding python 2.6 this was discontinued back in 2013, as far as I know all redhat versions that used 2.6 are no longer supported unless you're paying for extended support. So I'm not convinced it is a good excuse. Also if you use Java for example and you want to use JDK7 or JDK8 it doesn't matter that RH distro uses old version you'll find a proper RPM (or build one) to use it.

compostor42 11y ago

Same here. It really wasn't that long ago that I was sticking with Python 2 and recommending to my managers that new projects be started with Python 2. (Yes, I know, I was part of the problem) These days, I have few reservations about starting new projects with Python 3. It has become my new default.

skizm 11y ago

I still use python 2 because I'm not the best programmer and most stack overflow answers are python 2 based (although more and more are for both now-a-days). I wouldn't be opposed to using python 3, but see no real reason to do so.

odonnellryan 11y ago
That's valid, but I don't think there are many questions that don't apply to both languages. I'd bet most times you will just have to change range() and print(). The difference in the two versions isn't too extreme!
takeda 11y ago
Man I hate this argument so much. People make it look like those are two completely different languages, even though there are actually very minor differences. You'll realize it once you'll start using python 3. Also py3 is much easier to master for a novice because it is much more consistent and no longer has some special cases. For example if you're dividing a number you no longer need to convert one variable to be float in order to get a decimal. There is no int and long types, just int etc.

odonnellryan 11y ago

Can you give me an example of when you used async in Python? I haven't seen a good one. Thanks!