[Python-Dev] Continuing 2.x (original) (raw)

Stephen J. Turnbull stephen at xemacs.org
Wed Nov 10 05:20:58 CET 2010

James Y Knight writes:

On Nov 8, 2010, at 6:08 PM, Lennart Regebro wrote:

2010/11/8 James Y Knight <foom at fuhm.net>:

On Nov 8, 2010, at 4:42 AM, Lennart Regebro wrote:

So it can be done, but the question is "Why?"

To keep the batteries included?

But they'll only be included in > 2.7, which won't be used much, [...]

If there was going to be an official python.org sanctioned Python 2.8 release, I'm not at all sure that'd be the case. Since there isn't going to be one, then yes, that's probably true.

Which pretty much demonstrates that the argument for a sanctioned 2.8 is weak, and ditto for adding features to 2.7.

Python 2.7 is a great language; existing projects which need to go beyond that need to port to a different language. The OP is already doing that IIUC: Stackless is a pretty faithful implementation of Python (in several versions of the language, too!), but not quite 100%, right? OTOH, how many derivatives has C spawned? Or Pascal, FORTRAN, LISP? ML? And people continue to find that variety constraining, and invent new languages!

python-dev's decision to offer that different language as Python 3, where almost all of your skills will upgrade transparently (even though unfortunately a lot of code won't, at least not today), is probably a great boon to developers in Python. Time will tell.

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