[Chicago] Anyone using Python 3?

[Adam Forsyth]

TL;DR -- I've seen an increase in usage recently, I think it's happening
fast enough, and I don't think backing away from Python 3 is a good idea.

At Braintree, we've seen an uptick recently in requests for a Python 3
version of our server-side payments library, so I made a beta version
available a couple of months
ago<https://github.com/braintree/braintree_python/tree/python_3_beta>.
Internally, we're on 2.7, though I've ported a couple of internal apps to 3
because of issues like this <http://bugs.python.org/issue5639>.

I think Alex overstates the level of support for Python 3 in foundational
libraries. For example, Django 1.5 was the first release to support Python
3 at all, and the current version (1.6) is the first version where it's
nearly on par with Python 2.

I disagree with the basic premise that the low level of adoption at this
point is a failure. It really took until Python 3.3 for targeting it to
feel worthwhile to me for existing projects -- porting got easier and the
improvements from 2.7 got more significant.

I do agree that Python 3 is a relatively incremental improvement (and Guido
has said in some places they didn't go far enough), but that just means the
transition will happen more gradually as not everyone will see a reason to
upgrade at any given time. That's not a reason to avoid backwards
incompatible changes, and a Python 2.8 release would only slow things down
even further.

While "we're all used to the warts" may be an acceptable reason not to fix
them for existing Python programmers, it's not for all the people who have
yet to learn Python -- and if I was starting now, I would definitely rather
learn Python 3.

Which brings me to the final point -- lots of Python courses (if not most)
are now using Python 3. As those people enter the workforce, more and more
projects will be started on Python 3, because that's what the people who
started them are used to.

This got a little long, if only I had a blog.
Adam



On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 5:24 PM, JP Bader <jp at zavteq.com> wrote:

> Based on this article, I'm curious about folks' usage:
>
> http://alexgaynor.net/2013/dec/30/about-python-3/
>
> I'm not advocating 2 or 3, but I find this interesting, especially as I've
> only been in the Python space for just about 2-3 years, and still never
> sure when to start a project in 2 or 3. (I'll admit, all new projects of
> mine have been in 2.7)
>
>
>
> --
> JP Bader
> Principal
> Zavteq, Inc.
> @lordB8r | jp at zavteq.com
> 608.692.2468
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Chicago at python.org
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>
>
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