[Python-ideas] Python 3000 TIOBE -3%

[Terry Reedy]

On 2/10/2012 10:32 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

The issue is whether Python 3 has a "strong imposition of Unicode
awareness" that Python 2 does not. If the OP only meant awareness of the 
fact that something called 'unicode' exists, then I suppose that could 
be argued. I interpreted the claim as being about some substantive 
knowledge of unicode.

In any case, the claim that I disagree a not about people's reactions to 
Python 3 or about human psychology and the propensity to stick with the 
known.

In response to Jim Jewett, you wrote
 > The fact is that with a little bit of knowledge, you can almost
 > certainly get more reliable (and in case of failure, more debuggable)
 > results from Python 3 than from Python 2.

That is pretty much my counterclaim, with the note that the 'little bit 
of knowledge' is most about non-unicode encodings and the change to some 
Python details.

> The point is that the user case you discuss is a toy case.

Thanks for dismissing me and perhaps a hundred thousand users as a 'toy 
cases'.

> the problem goes away if you get to define the problem away.

Doing case analysis, starting with the easiest cases is not defining the 
problem away. It is rather, an attempt to find the 'little bit on 
knowledge' needed in various cases. In your response, you went on to write

 > Counteracting FUD with words generally doesn't work
 > unless the words are a "magic spell" that reduces the unknown to
 > the known.

Exactly, and finding the Python 3 version of the magic spells needed in 
various cases, so they can be documented and publicized, is what I have 
been trying to do. For ascii-only use, the magic spell in 'ascii' in 
bytes() calls. For some other uses, it is 'encoding=latin-1' in open(), 
str(), and bytes() calls, and perhaps elsewhere. Neither of these 
constitute substantial 'unicode awareness'.

> I don't know of any nice way to say that.

There was no need to say it.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy