[Python-Dev] Python 3.0.1

[Paul Moore]

2009/1/30 Steve Holden <steve at holdenweb.com>:
> Most consistently missing from this picture has been effective
> communications (in both directions) with the user base.

Serious question: does anybody know how to get better communication
from the user base? My impression is that it's pretty hard to find out
who is actually using 3.0, and get any feedback from them. I suppose a
general query on clp might get some feedback, but otherwise, what?
I've not seen any significant amount of blog activity on 3.0.

As a small contribution, my position is as follows:

I use Python mostly for one-off scripts, both at home and at work. I
also use Python for a suite of database monitoring tools, as well as
using some applications written in Python (Mercurial and MoinMoin, in
particular). Ignore the applications, they aren't moving to 3.0 in the
short term (based on comments from the application teams).

For my own use, the key modules I need are cx_Oracle and pywin32.
cx_Oracle was available for 3.0 very quickly (and apparently the port
wasn't too hard, which is good feedback!). pywin32 is just now
available in preview form.

My production box is still using 2.5, and I will probably migrate to
2.6 in due course - but I'll probably leave 3.0 for the foreseeable
future (I may rethink if MoinMoin becomes available on 3.0 sooner
rather than later).

For my desktop PC, I'm using 2.6 but as I do a fair bit of
experimenting with modules, I'm taking it slowly (I'd like to see 2.6
binaries for a few more packages, really). I have 3.0 installed, but
not as default, so frankly it doesn't get used unless I'm deliberately
trying it out. Based on the recent threads, I'm thinking I really
should make 3.0 the default just to get a better feel for it. The
io-in-C changes would probably help push me to doing so (performance
isn't really an issue for me, but I find I'm irrationally swayed by
the "3.0 io is slow, but it's getting fixed soon by the io-in-C
rewrite" messages I've been seeing - I have no idea if that's a
general impression, or just a result of my following python-dev,
though). It would make no difference to me, personally, whether *any*
of the changes being discussed were released in 3.0.1 or 3.1 (except
insofar as I'd like to see them sooner rather than later).

So, in summary, for practical purposes I use 2.6. I probably could use
3.0 for a significant proportion of my needs, but the impressions I've
been getting make me cautious.

I'm using Windows, and although I *can* build a lot of stuff myself, I
really don't want to be bothered, so I rely on bdist_wininst
installers being available, which is an additional constraint.

Paul.