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

Stephen J. Turnbull stephen at xemacs.org
Fri Oct 29 06:59:27 CEST 2010

Brett Cannon writes:

I think people need to stop viewing the difference between Python 2.7 and Python 3.2 as this crazy shift and view it from python-dev's perspective;

That phrasing is harsh. People also need to work with code bases that are incompatible with Python 3.2 for various reasons, and will be very expensive to port to 3.2. Some, perhaps many, of those people do consider Python 3 to be the way to go, and I imaginge they are already going that way when they can. Nevertheless, their bread-and- butter projects are feeling pain; their world is going out of whack.

It is a "crazy shift" (or "crazy-making" shift) for them.

And for now the book writers have to feel the same way; a lot of Python-2-based applications are going to be perfectly happy to stay that way with Python 2.7 for years to come. The book writers need (as a commercial matter) to serve the new engineers who will be hired to maintain and extend those products. I suspect there will be a substantial market for Python 2 content in Python books until 2015 (although Mark Lutz should be able to sit back and just collect royalties on that part of his book starting in 2012).

You can view it as Python 3.2 is the next version after Python 2.7 just like 2.7 followed to 2.6,

Kristján acknowledges that. He's looking for some relief from his current headache.

Mark's position is different. His words suggest that he thinks that Python.org owes the users something, although if pressed I imagine he'd present some argument that more users will lead to development of a better language. I think the developers universally consider that to be objectively false: Python 3 is a much better language, and is on track to be a much better environment for development -- of itself and of applications -- in 2013 than Python 2 could conceivably be.

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