[Python-Dev] #Python3 ! ? (was Python Library Support in 3.x)

[Laurens Van Houtven]

Glad to hear the efforts are so appreciated. Unfortunately not
everyone agrees, but I'm beginning to think that's the tragedy of
internet politics :)

On Sun, Jun 20, 2010 at 10:34 PM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
> On 6/20/2010 6:35 AM, Laurens Van Houtven wrote:
> I have no idea what has been said by you or anyone on #python, but people
> *have* posted on both python-list and here on py-dev things like "Python3 is
> not ready for use. It is a failure. Do not use it." (any of that sound
> familiar? ;-) and even "Python3 should be scrapped!". I am relieve that you
> have disassociated yourself and #python from such sentiments.

I can understand how people coming to #python might have thought that,
in retrospect. I just wanted to make that part clear :) As for the
"Python 3.x is a failure" people, I just tune those out, and if
they're trolling about it on IRC, ban them.

> On newbies and version choice: I agree with Nick Efford that people using
> Python to learn about programming may be better off with Python3. I am using
> a subset of Python3 in a book on algorithms for the reasons he gave and
> others. Not even mentioned so far in this thread is the availability of
> unicode identifiers for people with non-Latin alphabets.

I think the difference here is probably the focus. I think you're more
interested in teaching people Python in a more academic context:
basically teaching CS through Python. #python, on the other hand, is
trying to help people build practical tools where the CS is often an
afterthought (though not as much as it is in other programming
language channels which I won't name).

>> In the mean while, we encourage people to write code that will be easy
>> to port and behave well in 3.x: new-style classes, don't use eager
>> versions when the Py3k default is lazy and you don't actually need the
>> eager thing, use as many third party libraries as possible (the idea
>> being that this would minimize effort needed to make the switch on the
>> grand scale of things), use absolute imports always (and only explicit
>> relative, but it's discouraged), always have a full unit test suite.
>
> is a good start. I think something like that would be good for the #python
> web page, or added to python.org somewhere.

Yeah, it's actually extremely prevalent, it's just not voiced
anywhere, we could probably put it up somewhere. It's sort of up in
the pound-python page but it's well-hidden in tongue-in-cheek, as
Antoine pointed out :)

> Terry Jan Reedy
>

Laurens