The real problem with Python 3 - no business case for conversion (was "I strongly dislike Python 3")

[John Nagle]

On 7/4/2010 5:34 PM, sturlamolden wrote:
> On 5 Jul, 01:58, John Nagle<na... at animats.com>  wrote:
>
>> Exactly.
>>
>> The "incompatible with all extension modules I need" part is the
>> problem right now.  A good first step would be to identify the top
>> 5 or 10 modules that are blocking a move to Python 3 by major
>> projects with many users.
>
> The big danger is Python 2.x becoming abandonware (2.7 being the
> final release) before major projects are ported. Using Python 2.x
> for new projects is not advisable (at least many will think so), and
> using 3.x is not possible. What to do? It's not a helpful situation
> for Python.

     Projects have been known to get into a state where version N-1
is abandonware, and version N isn't usable yet.  Then they die off.
The VRML-Web3D transition is an example.  VRML 97 was ahead of its
time because few people had enough graphics power in 1997 to run it.
During the dot-com boom, the "Web 3D Consortium" (http://www.web3d.org)
was formed to put 3D on the web.  The approach chosen was to recast
VRML in XML notation.  Users were starting to get 3D boards in quantity,
and VRML was starting to really work.  But the forced transition killed
work on VRML, while there wasn't enough momentum to get people to use
the XML version.

    The Web3D consortium is still around.  They have conferences.
They have something of a niche market in DoD training sims.
But they're running on empty. Nobody is paying attention.  There's
no mainstream interest in either VRML or Web3D.  It works fine;
there are X3D players, and they work great on modern graphics
processors.  But nobody cares.  That's what happens when you
mismanage an incompatible transition.

    That could happen to Python.

    Python has strong competition.  In the last two years,
Javascript has become much faster, PHP is getting a JIT compiler,
Lua, as recently mentioned, is getting up there with C in speed, and
Google is promoting Go.  The other scripting languages are becoming
rocket-powered.   Meanwhile, Python is in year 2 of a 5-year plan to
transition to something that goes no faster (and maybe slower) than
the previous version.  (Yes, there's Unladen Swallow and PyPy, but
neither of those projects seems to be anywhere near deployment,
and even if they succeed, their claimed speed goals are well below where
the competition is now.)  That's just not good enough any more.

    Denying that there's a problem does not help.

				John Nagle