[Python-Dev] Python 3 design principles

[Nick Craig-Wood]

On Thu, Sep 01, 2005 at 08:55:48AM +0200, Kay Schluehr wrote:
> The idea of forking a language with a new release and thereby 
> deevaluating older code seems somewhat archaic to me. Or the other way
> round: archaic materials and media like papyrus and scripture enabled
> communication across centurys changing slightly evolutionary and 
> continously. Form this point of view PL development is still in a state 
> of modernistic, youthfull irresponsibility.

I mostly agree with that.

For me personally, one of the big reasons for jumping ship from perl
to python (a considerable investment in time and effort) was to avoid
perl 6.  Its been clear for a long time that perl 6 will be completely
different to perl 5, thus making perl 5 an evolutionary dead end.  Yes
I know about the perl 5 on perl 6 stuff - but who wants to program in
a dead language?

I'm all for removing the cruft in python 3, and giving it a bit of a
spring clean, but please, please don't make it feel like a different
language otherwise the users will be deserting in droves (no-one likes
to be told that they've been using the wrong language for all these
years).

If come python 3, there is a 99% accurate program which can turn your
python 2.x into python 3 code, then that would ease the transition
greatly.

-- 
Nick Craig-Wood <nick at craig-wood.com> -- http://www.craig-wood.com/nick