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

[Alex Walters]

http://pyvideo.org/pycascades-2018/bdfl-python-3-retrospective.html link to Guido’s talk, for your convenience

 

From: Python-Dev <python-dev-bounces+tritium-list=sdamon.com at python.org> On Behalf Of Guido van Rossum
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2018 6:12 PM
To: Brett Cannon <brett at python.org>
Cc: Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org>; Python-Dev <python-dev at python.org>
Subject: Re: [Python-Dev] (Looking for) A Retrospective on the Move to Python 3

 

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 <mailto:brett at python.org> > wrote:

 

On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 10:19 Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org <mailto:barry at python.org> > wrote:

On Apr 26, 2018, at 09:28, Eric Snow <ericsnowcurrently at gmail.com <mailto:ericsnowcurrently at gmail.com> > wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 10:25 AM, Eric Snow <ericsnowcurrently at gmail.com <mailto: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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