Am 28.10.2010 18:07, schrieb lutz@rmi.net:

Kristj?n Valur J?nsson writes:

...

James Y Knight said: The python community has already decided many times over that Python2 is dead and Python3 is the future

But the patient is very much alive and kicking, no matter what the good doctor declares. Python 2.x is in widespread use, with gazillion lines of .py code. In, there is another gazillion lines of .c and .cpp code both in extensions and embedding applications in use. I?m quite happy with the community at large moving its development focus to 3.x but it is a bit harsh to deprive those left behind of the keys to the old house.

Exactly.

Has anyone here analyzed download stats on py.org lately? Please feel free to prove me wrong, but by my reckoning, and at least for Windows MSI installer files, people are still downloading Python 2.X roughly 3 to 4 times more often than Python 3.X today, some 2 years after 3.X's release.

This doesn't worry me too much. Just look at how long it usually takes for 2.(x+1) to actually get used over 2.x, or even 2.(x-1) -- and it's fairly obvious that this time will be a bit longer for 2.x -> 3.x. Georg -- Thus spake the Lord: Thou shalt indent with four spaces. No more, no less. Four shall be the number of spaces thou shalt indent, and the number of thy indenting shall be four. Eight shalt thou not indent, nor either indent thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to four. Tabs are right out.

On Oct 28, 2010, at 04:07 PM, lutz@rmi.net wrote:

I hope 3.X use expands; in fact, I've bet the future of at least one book on it. And even 1/4 of new users seems a large enough subset to care about too. But one can't help but wonder if most of the development community is focused on some imaginary future user base, at the expense of the much larger current user base. Then again, there's still plenty of Fortran77 code out there, so...

Python 2 will live on for a long time. Other than promising to bug-fix maintain Python 2.7 for much longer than usual, which we've already done, what specifically should we do? A no-new-feature Python 2.8 doesn't make sense, and I'm not convinced that a new-feature Python 2.8 really helps folks who are stuck on Python 2 for whatever reason. -Barry

Am 28.10.2010 18:07, schrieb lutz@rmi.net:

Kristj?n Valur J?nsson writes:

...

James Y Knight said: The python community has already decided many times over that Python2 is dead and Python3 is the future

But the patient is very much alive and kicking, no matter what the good doctor declares. Python 2.x is in widespread use, with gazillion lines of .py code. In, there is another gazillion lines of .c and .cpp code both in extensions and embedding applications in use. I?m quite happy with the community at large moving its development focus to 3.x but it is a bit harsh to deprive those left behind of the keys to the old house.

Exactly.

Has anyone here analyzed download stats on py.org lately?

I don't think anybody here questions that usage of 2.x is orders of magnitude larger than that of 3.x, and that it will stay that way for quite some time. If, by "Exactly", you also supported "it is a bit harsh", then I disagree. It's not harsh at all. Existing 2.x users are *not* deprived at all. 2.7 releases are still being made, and existing 2.x code will continue to run just fine for many years to come. Users who chose to ignore 3.x can well continue to work in their projects, without having to worry that bugs won't be fixed anymore.

Please feel free to prove me wrong, but by my reckoning, and at least for Windows MSI installer files, people are still downloading Python 2.X roughly 3 to 4 times more often than Python 3.X today, some 2 years after 3.X's release.

Again, no doubt about that - I readily believe you without checking, and you could have said that the factor was 10 and I still would have believe it. It just doesn't worry me.

But one can't help but wonder if most of the development community is focused on some imaginary future user base, at the expense of the much larger current user base.

Yes, we do focus on future users, but we are also working on future releases. But not at the expense of the much larger current user base. They are being given much time to convert their code to 3.x. So far, there has been no pressure at all to migrate. Now, we are telling them that there won't be new features in 2.x anymore - but many haven't switched to 2.7, either. Debian still ships with 2.5, and the next Debian release will be shipping with 2.6. So any theoretical 2.8 release would be just as irrelevant to existing users for many years to come (e.g. the *next* Debian release would switch to 2.7). Regards, Martin