[Python-Dev] (Looking for) A Retrospective on the Move to Python 3

[Guido van Rossum]

Also see my talk at PyCascades and Victor's upcoming talk at PyCon.

On Thu, Apr 26, 2018, 12:02 Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 10:19 Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
>
>> On Apr 26, 2018, at 09:28, Eric Snow <ericsnowcurrently at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 10:25 AM, Eric Snow <
>> ericsnowcurrently at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> In pondering our approach to future Python major releases, I found
>> >> myself considering the experience we've had with Python 3.  The whole
>> >> Py3k effort predates my involvement in the community so I missed a
>> >> bunch of context about the motivations, decisions, and challenges.
>> >> While I've pieced some of that together over the years now since I've
>> >> been around, I've certainly seen much of the aftermath.  For me, at
>> >> least, it would be helpful to have a bit more insight into the
>> >> history. :)
>>
>> It would certainly be an interesting document, but I suspect you’ll get a
>> bit of the old “ask 3 lawyers and get 5 opinions” kind of response. ;)
>>
>> As I remember it, there was definitely a feeling like, this would be our
>> only chance to clean up some annoying cruft, and rectify some (in
>> hindsight) incorrect design decisions made over the years, couple with a
>> healthy dose of “we have no idea how to do the bytes/str split in a
>> backward compatible way".  There was probably a sense that the Python
>> community was just small enough to be able to handle such a disruptive
>> change, but wouldn’t ever be so again.  The latter is definitely true
>> today, even if the former was overly optimistic.
>>
>
> I agree with everything Barry said. There are some lessons in hindsight of
> how we could have handled bytes/str, but it was more of a decision of
> "really long transition versus a short one" -- jokes on us for what "short"
> became ;) -- which we simply won't make ever again.
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