Rodney Somerstein wrote:
Hopefully things will start to fall into place for Python 3.x.
I see questions on comp.lang.python and elsewhere from people wanting to
use Python 3.x as their main development language. I think many people,
such as myself, are reluctant to jump into Python right now. My
perception is that 2.x has a limited life span.
Limited, yes, but long -- it is the primary version for most users now
-- it will be maintained for a good while.
best choice to jump into that right now when the 3.x branch of the
language itself is where most work seems to be going on. However, as you
noted, many packages aren't trivial to port and that seems to be going
very slowly.
Which contradicts your perception -- there are two types of work being done:
- development of the language itself -- yes, that is the 3.x branch
- development of third-party packages -- this is moving slowly to 3.x,
but every one I'm involved with is making great effort to keep things
2.x compatible as they develop for 3.x
- development of applications with python -- still mostly 2.x
The 2 to 3 transition is a much bigger deal for extension packages --
ones that cal into the C runtime, than it is for application code.
In short -- fire up 2.6.5, and code away -- I'm quite confident you will
be supported as you move forward.
How far away is Python 3 from being the main branch of the language? Are
we talking another year? 2? 5?
I'm going to guess about 2 years until it's the first choice for new
projects, and 5 or more before most projects have ported to it -- and
that is a totally uneducated guess!
In part, due to the fact
that packaging seems to be trickier for people to figure out with py2app
than with py2exe I have gotten that impression.
I've always found py2app to be easier to use, actually.
The only thing really missing once that is done is
a port of a good cross-platform UI library, such as wxWidgets, so that
cross-platform apps can be developed easily.
yup -- for me, I think wx will be the last one I rely on to get ported.
Oh well. It's a big package!
-Chris
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Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
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