[Python-Dev] PEP 414 (original) (raw)

Ezio Melotti ezio.melotti at gmail.com
Fri Mar 2 10:33:04 CET 2012

[quoting Armin from Reddit] "Because in all honesty, because string wrappers make a codebase horrible to work with. I will have to continue maintaining 2.x versions for at least another four or five years. The idea if having to use string wrappers for that long makes me puke."

Reading this led me to think the following:

Now, if the hook doesn't get in the way (AFAIU you just have to "install" it and it will do its work automatically), wouldn't it be better to use it in 3.3 too (especially considering that you will probably have to use it already for 3.1/3.2)? If my reasoning is correct, by the time you will be able to use u without problems you will have to start phasing it out because you won't need to support 2.x anymore.

Is this hook available somewhere? How difficult is the installation?
Does it strip the u automatically or is there a further step that developers should do before testing on 3.1/3.2?

Best Regards, Ezio Melotti

[0]: ISTM that people think "once you decide to switch to 3.x, there's really no reason to pick an older release, just pick the latest (3.3)".
While this might be true for single developers that install it by hand, I don't think it's the same for distros and I expect for 3.x the same time span between release and widespread availability that we have with 2.x (i.e. 4-5 years). However this is just an assumption, if you have more accurate information that can show that the time span will indeed be shorter for 3.x (e.g. 2-3 year), feel free to prove me wrong.

[1]: I think most projects still support 2.5, some support even older versions, some support only newer ones, but 2.5 as minimum support version seems a good average to me. Targeting the same use base seems reasonable to me (albeit not strictly necessary).

I know that this was just a comment on Reddit and was not in the PEP, but it smacks of you throwing all your toys out of the pram. It certainly wasn't a reasoned response to my point. And some of that toys-pram attitude bleeds through into the language of the PEP, leading others to make the criticisms that they have. A PEP is supposed to be balanced, reasonable and thought through. It's not supposed to gloss over things in a hand-wavy sort of way - there's still uncertainty in my mind, for example, whether the 3.2 hook will be a 2to3-style tool that runs over a chunk of the whole project's codebase between editing and running a test, or whether it's an import-time hook which only kicks in on files that have just been edited in a development session. Which of these it is might affect crucially the experience of someone wanting to support 3.2 and 3.3 and 2.6+ - but that clearly isn't you, and you don't seem to have much sympathy or patience with that constituency - we're all stick-in-the-muds who want to work with Ubuntu LTS, rather than people subject to constraints imposed by employers, clients, projects we depend on etc. In contrast, Nick made a more reasonable case when commenting ion my preference for unicodeliterals (on this list, not on Reddit), by reminding me about how unicodeliterals changes the semantics of string literals, and this increases the cognitive burden on developers. I'm not whinging about the PEP in this post - I've said elsewhere that I wasn't opposed to it. I'm just trying to respond to your apparent bewilderment at some of the reaction to the PEP. I have confidence that with your continued input and Nick's input, the wording of the PEP can be made such that it doesn't ruffle quite so many feathers. I'm looking forward to seeing the updates. Regards, Vinay Sajip

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