New Python 3.0 string formatting - really necessary?

[Steve Holden]

walterbyrd wrote:
> On Dec 21, 12:28 pm, Bruno Desthuilliers
> <bdesth.quelquech... at free.quelquepart.fr> wrote:
>> Strange enough,
>> no one seems to complain about PHP or Ruby's performances...
> 
> A few years back, there was a certain amount of chest thumping, when
> python/django easily beat ror in a benchmark test. Now that ruby is
> faster, I guess speed is no big issue.
> 
A fairly limited amount of chest-thumping, as I remember it.

> By the same reasoning, python advocates used to sneer at php because
> php constantly broke backward compatibility. Now that python does it,
> breaking backward compatibility is no big deal. I guess unicode
> support was not that important, until python caught up to perl.
> 
Python advocates shouldn't sneer at other languages. There's no need. If
you like Python, use it because of its merits, not because it's better
than something else.

Having said which, I must say that Python's "breaking backward
incompatibility" is of a somewhat different nature than (say) Visual
Basic's. It was known about for *several years* in advance, even before
Guido went to work for Google and finally had time to get the work
underway. Also it's defined to be a singular event, not a continuous set
of creeping changes. Python 3's updated syntax now constrains the
developers in the same way that Python 2's used to.

I wouldn't say that could remotely be described as "constantly" breaking
backward compatibility.

> I guess, the way it works is: you first assume that python is
> superior, then you figure out why.
> 
That's the way some people operate, but by no means all. Is it the
language or the people that are pissing you off. You sound a little
discontented for a c.l.py reader.

regards
 Steve
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Steve Holden        +1 571 484 6266   +1 800 494 3119
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