[Python-Dev] (Looking for) A Retrospective on the Move to Python 3 (original) (raw)

Barry Warsaw barry at python.org
Thu Apr 26 13🔞20 EDT 2018

On Apr 26, 2018, at 09:28, Eric Snow <ericsnowcurrently at gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 10:25 AM, Eric Snow <ericsnowcurrently at gmail.com> wrote: In pondering our approach to future Python major releases, I found myself considering the experience we've had with Python 3. The whole Py3k effort predates my involvement in the community so I missed a bunch of context about the motivations, decisions, and challenges. While I've pieced some of that together over the years now since I've been around, I've certainly seen much of the aftermath. For me, at least, it would be helpful to have a bit more insight into the history. :)

It would certainly be an interesting document, but I suspect you’ll get a bit of the old “ask 3 lawyers and get 5 opinions” kind of response. ;)

As I remember it, there was definitely a feeling like, this would be our only chance to clean up some annoying cruft, and rectify some (in hindsight) incorrect design decisions made over the years, couple with a healthy dose of “we have no idea how to do the bytes/str split in a backward compatible way". There was probably a sense that the Python community was just small enough to be able to handle such a disruptive change, but wouldn’t ever be so again. The latter is definitely true today, even if the former was overly optimistic.

-Barry

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