Hopefully, I can say the following in a constructive way. I certainly don't mean to attack anyone personally for their closely held beliefs, though I might disagree with them. And you have the right to those beliefs and to express them in a respectful and constructive manner on this mailing list, which I think you've done. No criticisms there. However, PEPs *are* official documents from the Python developer community, so I think it's required of us to present technical issues in an honest light, yet devoid of negative connotations which harm Python. On Mar 01, 2012, at 09:12 PM, Armin Ronacher wrote:
Why call it polemic? If you want to use ubuntu LTS you're forcing yourself to stick to a particular Python version for a longer time.
Not just a particular Python 3 version, but a particular Python 2 version too. And a particular kernel version, and version of Perl, Ruby, Java, gcc, etc. etc. That's kind of the whole point of an LTS. :)
Which means you don't want to have to adjust your code. Which again means that you're better of with the Python 2.x ecosystem which is proven, does not change nearly as quickly as the Python 3 one (hopefully) so if you have the choice between those two you would chose 2.x over 3.x. That's what this sentence is supposed to say. That's not polemic, that's just a fact.
I don't agree with the conclusion. But none of that is germane to the PEP anyway. The PEP could simply say that for some domains, the ability to port code from Python 2 to Python 3 would be enhanced by the reintroduction of the u-prefix. It could even explain why WSGI applications in particular would benefit from this. That would be enough to justify Guido's acceptance of the PEP. Cheers, -Barry