[Python-Dev] General Q&A regarding Python 3, adoption etc.

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Tue, 7 Jan 2014 09:16:10 +1000
Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> For anyone that isn't already aware, I wrote a Q & A about Python 3 last
> year (in response to an article about how we should have fixed the GIL
> instead of Unicode), and I've updated it extensively over the past several
> days due to Alex's misunderstanding of the objectives for Python 3.4 as
> well as Armin's latest piece on the increased difficulties in writing wire
> protocol handling code.

A couple remarks:

- the unicode section would gain being a little more on the practical
  side; for example the "surrogateescape" paragraph is an obscure and
  theoretical way of saying unicode filepaths (etc.) are fully
  supported on all platforms

- also, it doesn't seem very clear that the primary string type (str)
  is now unicode; this has important consequences, for example
  non-ASCII exception messages work fine in 3.x while they were very
  delicate to work with in 2.x

- when discussing Twisted / gevent alternatives, you should also mention
  Tornado, which is especially interesting because it works on both
  Python 2 and Python 3, and therefore presents a nice migration path

- perhaps you should discuss the idea that "uptake is slow", because
  the numbers are rather conflicting on that point; see what I wrote in
  https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2014-January/663922.html
  and also Chris Angelico's elaboration in
  https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2014-January/664003.html

Regards

Antoine.