[GTALUG] Python 2 vs python 3 debate

Lennart Sorensen lsorense at csclub.uwaterloo.ca
Tue Dec 16 16:57:41 UTC 2014


On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 10:31:04AM -0500, William Muriithi wrote:
> <html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/plain;"><style> body {  font-family: "Calibri","Slate Pro","sans-serif"; color:#262626 }</style> </head> <body data-blackberry-caret-color="#00a8df"><div>‎Morning, </div><div><br></div><div>Last week on Monday, Hugh listed a list of talks that were to take place following Tuesday though that didn't happen. There was a scheduled talk.</div><div><br></div><div>I did note though he raised the issue of how entrenched python 2 is. I am on python list and boy, that debate has been in the second week now.</div><div><br></div><div>‎http://www.mail-archive.com/python-dev@python.org/msg85353.html</div><div><br></div><div>‎http://www.mail-archive.com/python-dev@python.org/index.html#85319</div><div><br></div><div>What I find odd is how some of the devs there misjudge the ‎need of distribution support. In most companies, installing two versions of python is none starter, so don't see python 3 being widespread until after two release of Redhat with python 3 native support. Two releases as most people are still on RHEL5 and RHEL6 for example.</div><div><span style="font-family: Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif;">That may be around 2020 and hence a little early to invest in python 3 scripts.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif;">William </span></div><div><br></div><div></div></body></html>

Please no HTML crap.  Major demangling done by hand below:

> Morning,
>
> Last week on Monday, Hugh listed a list of talks that were to take place
> following Tuesday though that didn't happen. There was a scheduled talk.
> I did note though he raised the issue of how entrenched python 2 is. I
> am on python list and boy, that debate has been in the second week now.
> http://www.mail-archive.com/python-dev@python.org/msg85353.html
> http://www.mail-archive.com/python-dev@python.org/index.html#85319
>
> What I find odd is how some of the devs there misjudge the need of
> distribution support. In most companies, installing two versions of
> python is none starter, so don't see python 3 being widespread until
> after two release of Redhat with python 3 native support. Two releases
> as most people are still on RHEL5 and RHEL6 for example.
> That may be around 2020 and hence a little early to invest in python
> 3 scripts.

Well certainly Debian has no issue installing both python 2 and 3 at
the same time and has done so for quite a while.  Next release appears
to have 2.7 and 3.4 installed.

It is rather annoying when languages stop supporting existing working
code.  To me that pretty much means the language is immature and perhaps
even badly managed.  Not that that has ever stopped a language from
becoming popular.

-- 
Len Sorensen


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