On 07/05/2010 02:50 AM, Gregor Horvath wrote:
Am Sun, 04 Jul 2010 18:51:54 -0500
schrieb Tim Chase<python.l...@tim.thechases.com>:
I think it's the same venting of frustration that caused veteran
VB6 developers to start calling VB.Net "Visual Fred" -- the
language was too different and too non-backwards-compatible.
VB6 -> VB.NET and Python 2 -> 3 is not a valid comparison.
VB6 and VB.NET are totally different languages and technologies, with
some similarity in syntax. This is not true for Python 2->3.
This is an healthy organic language growth, not an abandon of a
language.
The quintessential example is Py3's breaking of Hello World.
It's a spectrum of language changes -- Visual Fred just happens
to be MUCH further down the same spectrum having more dramatic
changes. Only a subset of $OLD_VER (whether Py2 or VB6) code
will run unmodified under $NEW_VER (whether Py3 or VB.Net). It
just happens that the subset for Python is considerably larger
than the subset for VB (and Python's conversion tools seem a
little more useful than VB's, IMHO). IIRC, neither raw VB6 nor
Py2 byte-code will run raw in the new environment (old VB .exe
files don't make use of .Net libraries/CLR, nor do Py2 .pyc files
run under Py3) so a project-rebuild is a minimum (though in Py3,
s/minimum/negligible/) requirement.
A little defensive coding in $OLD_VER also helps, and here I'd
say Python developers had a MUCH longer lead-time to understand
scope & magnitude of the coming changes; VB6 developers (former
self included) had VB.Net foisted on them with much less
heralding about the areas-of-breakage.
I'm very much +0 on Py3...it doesn't impact my life yet and it's
not a regular part of my coding, but the changes I've seen are
good for the language and the future of Python. But
breaking-changes freak some folks out, leading to the put-downs
referenced by the OP. As a former VB6 developer, the shift to
VB.Net was enough to send me packing. The shift from Py2 to Py3
will be bumpy, but not enough to lose me as a developer.
-tkc
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