Will Python 3.x ever become the actual standard?
Steven D'Aprano
steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info
Wed Oct 23 20:18:07 EDT 2013
On Wed, 23 Oct 2013 04:57:25 -0700, dufriz wrote:
> I am starting to have doubts as to whether Python 3.x will ever be
> actually adopted by the Python community at large as their standard.
Of course it will. Python 2.7 is the last of the 2 series. It will be
given extended support, but eventually -- probably another five years or
so -- it will be no longer supported, just like Python 1.5 is no longer
supported.
> Years have passed, and a LARGE number of Python programmers has not even
> bothered learning version 3.x.
It's not like the differences are hard to learn. Even a mediocre
programmer can learn the differences in semantics and syntax in about
five minutes -- if you remember "print is a function", you're about half-
way there. Differences to the standard library are more extensive, but
still easy to learn.
> Why am I bothered by this? Because of lot
> of good libraries are still only for version 2.x, and there is no sign
> of their being updated for v3.x.
What do you call a "lot"? A million? Ten?
> I get the impression as if 3.x, despite
> being better and more advanced than 2.x from the technical point of
> view, is a bit of a letdown in terms of adoption.
Don't panic, the plan was always that the migration from 2 to 3 would
take about a decade. We're only half-way through it, and the migration is
proceeding according to plan:
- the majority of packages on PyPI now support Python 3, so the
"Wall of Shame" is now renamed the "Wall of Superpowers":
https://python3wos.appspot.com/
- big, important projects like numpy, scipy, django, zope, docutils etc.
now have either full Python 3 support, partial support, or are actively
working on it
- As of June this year, 39 of the top 50 downloaded projects from PyPI
had Python 3 support:
http://py3ksupport.appspot.com/
- It's not just CPython, other implementations like Nuitika, PyPy and
Cython have partial or full support for Python 3.
So don't worry about it.
--
Steven
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