Python 3 has some tiny, incremental improvements over Python 2
wrong, it now has multiple hugely useful stdlib libraries that aren’t in python 2 (enums, asyncio, multiple dispatch, …), many performance improvements, better internal string representation minimizing memory footprint, has fixed the broken string handling of python 2 that permitted many errors to propagate unnoticed.
Yes, a lot of libraries have been ported, but ten times as many have not
[citation needed]. i highly doubt this. e.g. the wall of superpowers and PyPI indicate this is no longer true:
[Writing Python 3 applications] is obviously not popular, because if it was, we’d have a lot of Python 3 apps in production, and much of the long tail of Python 2 libraries would be ported. Neither of those things is true. People either continue to write software in Python 2 or they pick another language that did not shoot itself in the face.
false: people do write python 3 applications, and don’t port their python 2 ones, because they are applications, not libraries, and don’t need porting to be useful for everyone.
You might as well ask someone to port their entire codebase to Ruby. Except, that would be cheaper. Now, if you are going to have to rewrite your software either way, would you choose Python 3? No.
the author totally pulled that out of his ass: why the fuck would it be cheaper? also ruby is less popular than python outside of webdev, therefore has less libraries than python, so that perceived problem of the author would be even bigger.
then fucking do it instead of being the 300th person suggesting it. do it, and have fun being ignored. or maybe not, who knows?
reviving Python 2 is so obviously the correct thing to do
no, the obvious solution is of course to stop whining, roll up your sleeves and port shit. i’d do it if i’d have ever perveived that problem, but mysteriously i don’t miss any libraries on python 3.
The community will, by that time, have shrunk dramatically, and lost its former glory. See: Perl
perl 6 is a community driven project alongside the continued, centralized development of perl 5. the developers of python 2 have stopped developing it years ago and moved on to python 3. totally different situation.
bottom line: what did that guy smoke to get to those totally unrealistic conclusions?
There are 44000 python 2 libraries. The version 2 tag js not used as it did not exist until the python 3 tag was added. Less than 10% of libraries are ported.
My favorite part is how he thinks Guido is an idiot. Guido explains very simply why python 3 had to happen. Why do people without basic language theory comprehension think they know better?
Guido has made some weird decisions. His dislike of functional idioms (map, filter, reduce, and anonymous functions in particular) is really odd, and working with Python after working in Ruby often feels subtly wrong, even though I actually prefer Python intellectually.
14
u/flying-sheep May 26 '14
this article is bad and misleading.
wrong, it now has multiple hugely useful stdlib libraries that aren’t in python 2 (enums, asyncio, multiple dispatch, …), many performance improvements, better internal string representation minimizing memory footprint, has fixed the broken string handling of python 2 that permitted many errors to propagate unnoticed.
[citation needed]. i highly doubt this. e.g. the wall of superpowers and PyPI indicate this is no longer true:
4281 python 2 packages
4801 python 3 packages
false: people do write python 3 applications, and don’t port their python 2 ones, because they are applications, not libraries, and don’t need porting to be useful for everyone.
the author totally pulled that out of his ass: why the fuck would it be cheaper? also ruby is less popular than python outside of webdev, therefore has less libraries than python, so that perceived problem of the author would be even bigger.
like CFFI (which is supported on python 2 and 3)?
then fucking do it instead of being the 300th person suggesting it. do it, and have fun being ignored. or maybe not, who knows?
no, the obvious solution is of course to stop whining, roll up your sleeves and port shit. i’d do it if i’d have ever perveived that problem, but mysteriously i don’t miss any libraries on python 3.
perl 6 is a community driven project alongside the continued, centralized development of perl 5. the developers of python 2 have stopped developing it years ago and moved on to python 3. totally different situation.
bottom line: what did that guy smoke to get to those totally unrealistic conclusions?