[Python-Dev] The bytes type

[Terry Reedy]

"James Y Knight" <foom at fuhm.net> wrote in message 
news:1C852710-575A-4855-8460-F70E74D57192 at fuhm.net...

| Everyone will continue to code in a
| 2.5-compatible dialect for the immediate future, because their code
| needs to continue to function in 2.5.

??  But once 2.6 and 3.0 come out, there will be some to many who don't 
have that need.  Anyone who needs their code to function in x.y will have 
to restrict their code to x.y and not use future additions.  And people who 
don't, may use new features.  Nothing new here.

I expect that if Guido survives and continues with the Py3 series, then in 
10 years, at least half of Python programmers will be essentially Py3 only, 
either by switching and not looking back or by having learned on Py3.

| As I keep pointing out, the
| language cleanup doesn't have to be all at once:

Of course, and gradual, continual cleanup was the original policy: 
deprecate, warn, and then remove.  But several years ago, enough people 
complained that Guido said "Ok, we will put non-trivial removals off for 
several years and then do it all at once in a new 3.0 version."  Under the 
old policy, apply(), old int division (1/2 ==0 instead of .5), and probably 
some others would have been long gone.  Now several years is about here.

Terry Jan Reedy