On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 10:19 Barry Warsaw <ba...@python.org> wrote: > On Apr 26, 2018, at 09:28, Eric Snow <ericsnowcurren...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 10:25 AM, Eric Snow <ericsnowcurren...@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. >
I agree with everything Barry said. There are some lessons in hindsight of how we could have handled bytes/str, but it was more of a decision of "really long transition versus a short one" -- jokes on us for what "short" became ;) -- which we simply won't make ever again.
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