http://pyvideo.org/pycascades-2018/bdfl-python-3-retrospective.html link to Guido’s talk, for your convenience From: Python-Dev <python-dev-bounces+tritium-list=sdamon.com@python.org> On Behalf Of Guido van Rossum Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2018 6:12 PM To: Brett Cannon <brett@python.org> Cc: Barry Warsaw <barry@python.org>; Python-Dev <python-dev@python.org> Subject: Re: [Python-Dev] (Looking for) A Retrospective on the Move to Python 3 Also see my talk at PyCascades and Victor's upcoming talk at PyCon. On Thu, Apr 26, 2018, 12:02 Brett Cannon <brett@python.org <mailto:brett@python.org> > wrote: On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 10:19 Barry Warsaw <barry@python.org <mailto:barry@python.org> > wrote: On Apr 26, 2018, at 09:28, Eric Snow <ericsnowcurrently@gmail.com <mailto:ericsnowcurrently@gmail.com> > wrote:
On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 10:25 AM, Eric Snow <ericsnowcurrently@gmail.com <mailto:ericsnowcurrently@gmail.com> > wrote:
In pondering our approach to future Python major releases, I found myself considering the experience we've had with Python 3. The whole Py3k effort predates my involvement in the community so I missed a bunch of context about the motivations, decisions, and challenges. While I've pieced some of that together over the years now since I've been around, I've certainly seen much of the aftermath. For me, at least, it would be helpful to have a bit more insight into the history. :)
It would certainly be an interesting document, but I suspect you’ll get a bit of the old “ask 3 lawyers and get 5 opinions” kind of response. ;) As I remember it, there was definitely a feeling like, this would be our only chance to clean up some annoying cruft, and rectify some (in hindsight) incorrect design decisions made over the years, couple with a healthy dose of “we have no idea how to do the bytes/str split in a backward compatible way". There was probably a sense that the Python community was just small enough to be able to handle such a disruptive change, but wouldn’t ever be so again. The latter is definitely true today, even if the former was overly optimistic. I agree with everything Barry said. There are some lessons in hindsight of how we could have handled bytes/str, but it was more of a decision of "really long transition versus a short one" -- jokes on us for what "short" became ;) -- which we simply won't make ever again. _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org <mailto:Python-Dev@python.org> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/guido%40python.org