[Python-Dev] Internal representation of strings and Micropython (original) (raw)

Paul Sokolovsky pmiscml at gmail.com
Wed Jun 4 23:14:32 CEST 2014

Hello,

On Wed, 4 Jun 2014 11:25:51 -0700 Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

This thread has devolved into a flame war. I think we should trust the Micropython implementers (whoever they are -- are they participating here?)

I'm a regular contributor. I'm not sure if the author, Damien George, is on the list. In either case, he's a nice guy who prefer to do development rather than participate in flame wars ;-). And for the record, all opinions expressed are solely mine, and not official position of MicroPython project.

to know their users and let them do what feels right to them. We should just ask them not to claim full compatibility with any particular Python version -- that seems the most contentious point.

"Full" compatibility is never claimed, and understanding it as such is optimistic, "between the lines" reading of some users. All of: announcement posted on python-list (which prompted current inflow of MicroPython-related discussions), README at https://github.com/micropython/micropython , and detailed differences doc https://github.com/micropython/micropython/wiki/Differences make it clear there's no talk about "full" compatibility, and only specific compatibility (and incompatibility) points are claimed.

That said, and unlike previous attempts to develop a small Python implementations (which of course existed), we're striving to be exactly a Python language implementation, not a Python-like language implementation. As there's no formal, implementation-independent language spec, what constitutes a compatible language implementation is subject to opinions, and we welcome and appreciate independent review, like this thread did.

Realistically, most Python code that works on Python 3.4 won't work on Micropython (for various reasons, not just the string behavior) and neither does it need to.

That's true. However, as was said, we're striving to provide a compatible implementation, and compatibility claims must be validated. While we have simple "in-house" testsuite, more serious compatibility validation requires running a testsuite for reference implementation (CPython), and that's gradually being approached.

-- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)

-- Best regards, Paul mailto:pmiscml at gmail.com

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