[python-advocacy] Python 3000 question for PR

[Catherine Devlin]

On Dec 5, 2007 4:43 PM, David Goodger <goodger at python.org> wrote:
> 1. Remove cruft (flaws, warts, deprecated features) accumulated since
>    1990, to build a strong foundation for future innovation.
>
> 2. Improve and streamline the language/syntax in subtle ways to improve
>    usability and remove ambiguity.

Here's my attempt at putting politician-like spin on this.  :)

Right now, anybody who knows Python will likely say, "Python is a
great language - so elegant, so beautiful, so well-constructed.  Well,
except for..."

Python 3000 will pretty much wipe out those "except for"s.  The result
will be appealing for exactly the same reasons Python has always been
appealing - only more so.  The speed, the readability, the power to
find elegant programming solutions - those are Python's advantages
right now, and will be even more so for Python 3000.

I predict that will increase its draw among serious programmers across
the board, which should infuse the Python community with even more
energy and accelerate the growth of the Python ecosystem.  No big-news
functionality is being added in Python 3000 itself; but Python
developers everywhere are constantly generating amazingly functional
open-source modules that any developer can incorporate into their own
projects.  That process will only speed up with Python 3000.

Really, I don't think backwards-compatibility is an important part of
the story.  It's a detail of implementation, and not as radical as it
sounds.

> 3. Change text data to be Unicode throughout, elevating text to a
>    distinct data type and allowing for easier and more universal
>    internationalization and localization.

And that's important for all sorts of legitimate (and buzzwordly)
reasons.  Globalization.  Non-Latin alphabets.  Computers aren't an
American thing or even a Western thing anymore.  Good Unicode
handling, built right into the language, is going to be crucial for
Python's worldwide spread.  (In fact, with One Laptop Per Child,
Python would probably be at the forefront of that anyway.)

-- 
- Catherine
http://catherinedevlin.blogspot.com/