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

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Thu Oct 28 21:05:18 CEST 2010

Am 28.10.2010 18:07, schrieb lutz at rmi.net:

Kristj?n Valur J?nsson <kristjan at ccpgames.com> writes:

James Y Knight said: The python community has already decided many times over that Python2 is dead and Python3 is the future

But the patient is very much alive and kicking, no matter what the good doctor declares. Python 2.x is in widespread use, with gazillion lines of .py code. In, there is another gazillion lines of .c and .cpp code both in extensions and embedding applications in use. I?m quite happy with the community at large moving its development focus to 3.x but it is a bit harsh to deprive those left behind of the keys to the old house. Exactly. Has anyone here analyzed download stats on py.org lately?

I don't think anybody here questions that usage of 2.x is orders of magnitude larger than that of 3.x, and that it will stay that way for quite some time.

If, by "Exactly", you also supported "it is a bit harsh", then I disagree. It's not harsh at all. Existing 2.x users are not deprived at all. 2.7 releases are still being made, and existing 2.x code will continue to run just fine for many years to come. Users who chose to ignore 3.x can well continue to work in their projects, without having to worry that bugs won't be fixed anymore.

Please feel free to prove me wrong, but by my reckoning, and at least for Windows MSI installer files, people are still downloading Python 2.X roughly 3 to 4 times more often than Python 3.X today, some 2 years after 3.X's release.

Again, no doubt about that - I readily believe you without checking, and you could have said that the factor was 10 and I still would have believe it. It just doesn't worry me.

But one can't help but wonder if most of the development community is focused on some imaginary future user base, at the expense of the much larger current user base.

Yes, we do focus on future users, but we are also working on future releases. But not at the expense of the much larger current user base. They are being given much time to convert their code to 3.x. So far, there has been no pressure at all to migrate. Now, we are telling them that there won't be new features in 2.x anymore - but many haven't switched to 2.7, either.

Debian still ships with 2.5, and the next Debian release will be shipping with 2.6. So any theoretical 2.8 release would be just as irrelevant to existing users for many years to come (e.g. the next Debian release would switch to 2.7).

Regards, Martin

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