python 3's adoption

[Alan Harris-Reid]

Xah Lee wrote:
> Some thoughts about Python 3 Adoption.
>
> Xah Lee, 2010-01-26
>
> Some notes of Wikipedia readings related to Python.
>
> Unladen Swallow, a new project from Google. It is a new python
> compiler with the goal of 5 times faster than the de facto standand
> implementation CPython. Also note Stackless Python, which is already
> been used in some major commercial projects.
>
> Was looking into what's new in Python 3. See: http://docs.python.org/dev/3.0/whatsnew/3.0.html.
> >From a quick reading, i don't really like it. Here's some highlights:
>
>     * Print is now a function. Great, much improvement.
>     * Many functions that return lists now returns “Views” or
> “Iterators” Instead. A fucking fuck all fucked up shit. A extraneous
> “oop engineering” complication. (See: Lambda in Python 3000)
>     * The cmp() function used in sort is basically gone, users are now
> supposed to use the “key” parameter instead. This is a flying-face-
> fuck to computer science. This would be the most serious fuckup in
> python 3. (See: Sorting in Python and Perl)
>     * Integers by default is long. Great!
>     * Much more integrated unicode support, rewrite of most its text
> or string semantics. Fantastic. Finally.
>
> Am looking because i wonder if i should switch to python 3 for my own
> few scripts, and rewrite my Python Tutorial for version 3. Am also
> interested to know how python 3 is received by the computing industry.
> Apparantly, a little search on the web indicates that vast majority of
> python base have not switched, as expected, for many good reasons.
> Vast majority of major python modules and tools have not switched.
> Most linux distro have not switched, i don't find any large
> corporation having adopted Python 3 (Google, Yahoo, Facebook,
> NASA,... ). (sources: Source, Source) Basically, such a incompatible
> change with trivial, ideological improvements, is too costy to switch.
>
> I wonder, if by 2015, will most large corporate users have switched to
> python 3. I give it a maybe. In today's Proliferation of Computing
> Languages, such a major antic by Guido can just hurt itself. What is
> he thinking? He of course thought himself as a god of lang designer,
> who sincerely wants to push towards perfection, all future-looking.
> Unfortunately, the tens of other major language designers all think
> similarly.
>
> perm archive of this post with possible updates here:
> http://xahlee.org/comp/python3.html
>
> Any comment on this?
>
>   Xah
> ? http://xahlee.org/
Hello Xah,

I have no figures to base this on (just what I have read on the web), 
but although the vast majority of comanies with big Python investments 
are probably waiting for the 'critical mass' to use Python3 regularly 
(oil-tanker effect), I would like to think that smaller operations are 
experimenting with it more-and-more.

I think that for beginners who have dived into Python in the last 6-12 
months (like me), it doesn't make sense to start with an older version. 
I do not want to learn 'old' syntax and functions of a language, only to 
have to learn the new versions when most developers upgrade to 3 - I 
might as well learn the new syntax now and be ahead-of-the-game ;-) . I 
know my choice of related packages (web-framework, ORM, 
templating-engine) is very limited at present, but there are enough 
branches and beta-versions around to help me with my learning-curve, and 
I figure there will be some full-production-releases around by the time 
I am 'fluent' with Python (12-18 months?).

Currently I am using Python 3.1 and CherryPy (3.20 rc1) every day, and 
have had no serious problems (yet).

I would be interested to hear how other people are using Python 3, and 
with what compatible packages.

Regards,
Alan Harris-Reid