On Nov 2, 2009, at 11:28 PM, Barry Warsaw wrote:
On Nov 2, 2009, at 10:48 PM, sstein...@gmail.com wrote:
A better language, i.e. Python 3.x, will become better faster
without dragging the 2.x series out any longer.
If Python 2.7 becomes the last of the 2.x series, then I personally
favor back porting as many features from Python 3 as possible. I
still think doing so will help people migrate to Python 3 by getting
their Python 2 code base as close to Python 3 as possible without
biting the ultimate bullet. E.g. for me "from __future__ import
absolute_import, unicode_literals" in Python 2.6 has helped quite a
bit.
I agree as long as:
A> 2.7 comes out as soon as possible, even if it's missing helpful
porting features.
B> 2.7 will get ONLY new features that make it easier to port to 3.x,
not every feature added to 3.x or all you've done is make "Python 2.7,
the Python 3 Version." and core developer time will continue to be
wasted on Python 2.7 instead of moving forward.
I also think Guido's call for feature freeze makes a lot more sense
when 2.7 is the EOL. Let's give people migrating to Python 3 a nice
big stable target to hit. Improving the stdlib also gives people a
big carrot to move.
Agreed. And specifically NOT porting every shiny new toy from Python 3
back to 2.7 makes sure the carrots are only in the 3.x series.
I think it's also necessary to give third party library and
application authors as much help as possible to provide Python 3
compatible software. Putting together Python tools involves so many
dependencies in a fairly deep stack that even one unconverted
library can cause everything above it to stall on Python 2.
And that's one of the reasons my explorations into Python 3 have been
limited to pretty much nothing.
I don't have time to do a bunch of work only to find out that the tool
I absolutely have to have to finish a project doesn't have a Python 3
version or has been crippled to make a Python 3 version.
BeautifulSoup, which I use every day, is one such product. Since the
crappy old SMGL parser's gone, BeautifulSoup uses the one that's left
in Python 3 and it makes BeautifulSoup completely useless for my daily
work.
That's not to say I can't fix that one particular project, but
customers get cranky when their project is taking longer than expected
and "Oh, I'm having to convert a lot of things to use Python 3"
doesn't seem to improve their mood much.
Thanks,
S
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