[Python-Dev] email package status in 3.X (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Sun Jun 20 12:57:56 CEST 2010

On Sun, Jun 20, 2010 at 7:32 PM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:

True, C++ does introduce a lot of new features, but most programmers migrating from C to C++ don't learn to use them properly for years, if ever, I'm told. I don't see how Python 3 has that problem. You can be productive here and now in Python 3, re-using your knowledge of Python 2 with a bit of added information.

Yeah, the significant issues with Python 3 over Python 2 only apply to people with legacy Python 2 code to worry about. The one thing that makes Python 3 potentially less desirable than Python 2 for some new applications is that the third party library support isn't quite as good yet. As more of the "big" libraries and frameworks provide Python 3 compatible versions, that factor will go away.

As far as I can tell, with 3 years still to go on my own original prediction of 5+ years for Python 3 to start to be competitive with Python 2 for programming mindshare, adoption actually seems to be progressing fairly well. A lot of key functionality is either already supported in Python 3 or will be soon, and a lot of the rest is at least talking about plans for Python 3 compatibility. It's just that 5 years can seem like an eternity in the internet age, so sometimes people see the relative lack of adoption of Python 3 at this stage and start to panic about it being a failure.

Now, if we're still having this conversation in 2013, then I'll admit we have a problem with the Python 3 uptake rate ;)

Cheers, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan at gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia

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