[Python-ideas] Is it Python 3 yet?

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 2:32 PM, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
> On 26.01.2017 23:09, Random832 wrote:
>> On Thu, Jan 26, 2017, at 11:21, Paul Moore wrote:
>>> On a similar note, I always get caught out by the fact that the
>>> Windows default download is the 32-bit version. Are we not yet at a
>>> point where a sufficient majority of users have 64-bit machines, and
>>> 32-bit should be seen as a "specialist" choice?
>>
>> I'm actually surprised it doesn't detect it, especially since it does
>> detect Windows.
>>
>> (I bet fewer people have supported 32-bit windows versions than have
>> Windows XP.)
>
> I think you have to differentiate a bit more between having a
> 64-bit OS and running 64-bit applications.
>
> Many applications on Windows are still 32-bit applications and
> unless you process large amounts of data, a 32-bit Python
> system is well worth using. In some cases, it's even needed,
> e.g. if you have to use an extension which links to a 32-bit
> library.

It's also relatively common to need a 64-bit Python, e.g. if running
programs that need more than 4 GiB of address space. (Data analysts
run into this fairly often.)

I don't know enough about Windows to have an informed opinion about
how the trade-offs work out, but as an additional data point, it looks
like in the last ~week of PyPI downloads, 32-bit windows wheels have
been downloaded 379943 times, and 64-bit windows wheels have been
downloaded 331933 times [1], so it's pretty evenly split 53% / 47%.

-n

[1]

SELECT
  COUNT(*) AS downloads,
  REGEXP_EXTRACT(file.filename, r"(win32|win_amd64)\.whl") as windows_bitness,
FROM
  TABLE_DATE_RANGE( [the-psf:pypi.downloads], TIMESTAMP("20170119"),
TIMESTAMP("20170126") )
GROUP BY
  windows_bitness
ORDER BY
  downloads DESC
LIMIT
  1000

-- 
Nathaniel J. Smith -- https://vorpus.org