On 07:56 am, anthony@interlink.com.au wrote:

Additionally, without a 2.x<->3.x upgrade path 3.x is essentially a new language, having to build a new userbase from scratch. Worse yet, 2.x will suffer as people have the perception "Python 2? That's a dead/abandoned language"

It's worse than that. This perception has _already_ been created. I already have heard a few folks looking for new languages to learn choose Ruby over Python and give Py3K as a reason. "Isn't Python going to be totally different in a few years anyway? I'll just wait until then, seems like a waste of time to learn it now." Given Ruby's own checkered history of compatibility, I don't think this is an _accurate_ perception, but it is the nature of perception to be inaccurate. If the plan is to provide a smooth transition, it would help a lot to have this plan of foward and backward compatibility documented somewhere very public. It's hard to find information on Py3K right now, even if you know your way around the universe of PEPs. FWIW, I also agree with James that Python 3 shouldn't even be released until the 2.x series has reached parity with its feature set. However, if there's continuity in the version numbers instead of the release dates, I can at least explain to Twisted users that we will _pretend_ they are released in the order of their versions.