[Python-Dev] Product function patch [issue 1093] (original) (raw)

Robert Kern robert.kern at gmail.com
Wed Sep 5 05:28:46 CEST 2007

Guido van Rossum wrote:

On 9/4/07, Robert Kern <robert.kern at gmail.com> wrote:

The 3.x compatibility break (however alleviated by 2to3) makes a nice clean cutoff. The numpy that works on Pythons 3.x would essentially be a port from the current numpy. Consequently, we could modify the numpy for Pythons 3.x to always rely on the stdlib API to build on top of. We couldn't do that for the version targeted to Pythons 2.x because we could only rely on its presence for 2.6+. I don't mind maintaining two versions of numpy, one for Python 2.x and one for 3.x, but I don't care to maintain three. I just had a discussion with Glyph "Twisted" Lefkowitz about this. He warns that if every project using Python uses 3.0's incompatibility as an excuse to make their own library/package/project incompatible as well, we will end up with total pandemonium (my paraphrase). I think he has a good point -- we shouldn't be injecting any more instability into the world than absolutely necessary.

I agree. I didn't mean to imply that the 3.x version of numpy would be incompatible to users of it, just that the codebase that implements it will be different, whether it is automatically or manually translated.

Of course, if the API is introduced in 3.(x>0), we end up with the same problem I wanted to avoid. Ah well. See you on the flip side of the PEP.

-- Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth." -- Umberto Eco

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