python 3's adoption

[Alf P. Steinbach]

I'm responding to the original message by Xah Lee, which is not carried by my 
Usenet provider.

* 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.

Actually not, IMHO. All it does is is to provide incompatibility. They forgot 
Ronald Reagan's old maxim: if it don't need fixin', don't fix it.


>>     * 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)

On the contrary, this is a great improvement. It makes no sense to have to write 
more code and less readable code for the common efficient case. And the default, 
the way that takes 0.5 seconds less to do, does have a great influence on what 
people choose, even in elections (Obama's latest "opt out" proposal is an 
example that this principle is recognized even by the President of the United 
States). When you want an explicit collection such as a 'list', introducing some 
overhead for presumably a good reason, it's as easy as e.g. 'list(range(42))'.


>>     * 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)

I agree. :-)

Probably there must have been some rationale, but to put it bluntly removing the 
comparator is more like moronic than pythonic. If the rationale was efficiency, 
then a rational solution could be to provide two sort methods, like 'sort' using 
direct comparisions and 'custom_sort' using a specified comparator. Come to 
think of it, that door is still open, except for the language spec freeze.

It's possible to work around the removal of 'cmp' in various kludgy ways, but 
you shouldn't have to "work around" a library sort routine.


>>     * Integers by default is long. Great!

Yes, totally agree.

Nothing confuses the newbie or the now-and-then programmer so much as limited 
range integers.

Well, perhaps floating point, but...


>>     * Much more integrated unicode support, rewrite of most its text
>> or string semantics. Fantastic. Finally.

I'm not sure if the Unicode support is fantastic. I have the impression that 
there are still some edges to iron out and corners to smooth, + bugs to kill. 
But it's Very Good.


[snip]

Cheers,

- Alf