Additionally, it has stumbling blocks towards achieving the upgrade. Packages you're using aren't upgraded, you have a lot of code dealing with strings, and so on. I worked on a project that tried to use Python 3.x and it was a nightmare in both regards.
In my view, Python 3 doesn't offer any major reasons to upgrade other than we've been told to. Someone tell me: what is it that's so compelling about Python 3? For instance, when you click on "What's new in Python 3" on this page, the first thing in the list is "print is a function". Seriously? The FIRST thing in the list is something that breaks code and has very little impact. Unicode has a lot more impact, breaks a lot more stuff, and is doable in 2.x anyway, yet is the 5th or 6th thing in the list.
So I'm not really sure what the devs were thinking with Python 3.x. It broke a lot of stuff but didn't break enough to make Python notably better. I was around and a heavy Python user for the 1.x -> 2.x upgrade. That was far easier, had some features I could really use, and there was a much smaller installed base. This time around, I just don't see the reason I should upgrade. Eventually, I imagine I will when support is so far gone that there's no choice, or there's some amazing feature that requires it.
For those of you who will respond: "So don't upgrade, or switch off Python". One of those is mission accomplished. The other one remains to be seen, though if Tiobe is at all believed, Python is declining sharply in interest.
There's lots of reasons I find coding in Python 3 more enjoyable and productive. Unicode by default, removing x*() functions and returning generators where appropriate instead, removing old-style classes, improved consistency in standard object interfaces/protocols, standard lib cleanups, etc. Yes, even print() - keyword args are a lot nicer than the old hackish syntax for things like the output file.
These are often called minor and "no compelling reason to upgrade", but I'd submit that when a language does more often what you expect it to do, when the number of gotchas you need to keep in mind is reduced significantly, that's not minor. It might not be a reason to switch a large existing codebase over, but it's certainly a reason to write the next large codebase in it, and that's what Python 3 aims at: The future of Python and its future users.
No, that doesn't make for a fast transition, but indeed, it was never expected to be ("five years" is the plan, we're not there yet, and things look to be on track). Eventually, there just won't be any reasons left not to use Python 3, but plenty of reasons to do so (the better core language, the sum of improvements in the standard lib, the continued maintenance), and then it'll be done.
I guess that's my most major beef with it. The upgrade has been tough, and a lot of the most inconsistent aspects of Python weren't fixed. (A good example: "len()")
BTW, I tried using Python 3 on that project in 2010, if that helps anyone gauge my opinion on it.
I'm kind of surprised that people think people are surprised that the upgrade to Python 3 has gone so slowly. After all, Guido himself has stated on numerous occasions that the migration would take many years to complete. The time to complete this transition is not so much of a problem for a language that plans to be around for the indefinite future. After all, the future is much longer than the past.
Should they work with 2.x which is going to go away, or 3 whose ecosystem is not ready yet.
Anyway, I think it makes more sense to major-version language than implementation changes. In theory CPython vs. PyPy shouldn't matter to code.
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....
Java script seems to be going strong. Python has fallen by 3 places and has the maximum drop in ratings among top 20 languages.
Python is right next to Perl.
Since according to many Pythonistas and the references they used to point to in the past when they talked of Perl, Perl was dead for the same metrics which Python has now.
1. A major revision whose ecosystem isn't ready.
2. Current stable widely deployed version is going to go away soon.
3. Fall in ratings.
4. Fall in usage.
5. Rise of new languages like clojure.
Can we say Python is dead? It must be since TIOBE says so!
I am just applying the same principles to Python what used to be applied to Perl.
And more importantly there is data to back up everything that I said.
Maybe it is only me, but I feel the number of Python-related articles is higher than ever on HN.
Though, it'd be interesting to write some code to pull language interests off HN. It would be an interesting experiment. Granted, HN is a tiny subset of the programming community, but it would be interesting nevertheless.
Things that would have made Py3 enticing to me: - JIT - Real GIL improvements (no changing from op-slicing to time-slicing is not a real improvement) - Better OO. Roles, traits, enough with the duck-typing. - Anonymous subroutines/multiline lambdas. Creating closure generators is too much work in Python compared to Perl. - Tail recursion - More stuff that will come to me after I click "submit"
JIT and GIL are not language features, they're implementation details. Once alternative implementations catch up, many will look at this again.
The other things are considered to be language features by many, have been discussed to death by developers and users alike, and are unlikely to be changed or modified any time soon.
The only reason I've used Python 3 at all was because of project involving blender. I needed to do in-memory JPEG compression for quickly streaming images from the game engine. In Python 2, this is a couple lines of code using PIL. Instead, I ended up having to write my own pyjpeg module that provided a ctypes interface to a custom libjpeg-based compression library. I'm proud of the result, but the aggravation and frustration that entailed has removed any desire I have to move to Python 3.
The good news is that adoption should pick up very quickly after this fall. Python 3.3 will make it easier to port Python 2 projects and provide more incentives to upgrade. There's also nearly a critical percentage of major packages ported, and Django (which is still on Python 2, and is a deal breaker for many people) will have experimental support for versions up to 3.3.
I expect that by this time next year, the default for most new projects will be Python 3.
I think now that 2.7 is the last we will start to see a bit more migrate.
Edit: I didn't mean they aren't shipping 3.0, but that the default is still 2.7.x
The fact is that almost every major distro is shipping Python 3, and often has been for several releases/years: Fedora, Ubuntu, openSUSE, Debian, Gentoo, ArchLinux ... and many of these also have anywhere from dozens to hundreds of Python 3 libraries packaged.
If you mean that /usr/bin/python still points to Python 2 on most of these (in fact all of them except for ArchLinux): True, and that is unlikely to change, possibly never. It's my understanding that this is in keeping with upstream's wishes (from discussions on python-devel and python-porting): bin/python is to remain Python 2 with python3 being the right way to run the Python 3 interpreter.
Python2 is still in base-devel, but /usr/bin/python symlinks to python3, not python2.
Grr.
Finally, I started learning it just a month ago and now I don't know what ever stopped me before. In fact, the most annoying thing I've found about Python3 is that my searches for documentation on DDG or Google all go to the Python2 docs.
Anyway, the observation is to note how long it takes to get people "upgrade" when "breaking" changes are made to languages.
But they should also mention they are taking away our beloved print and quick string formatting.
The string formatting syntax did indeed change, but the new syntax is just as "quick" as the old one, just different (see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/517355/string-formatting-...).
Perl 5 is right out.
That is, at the same time when they removed some tried and true language constructs people liked and didn't add more of any powerful features that everyone was hoping for.
I bet Python 2.x will dominate for a long time, possibly with PyPy w/ LLVM becoming the de facto implementation instead of the discontinued CPython. Also, another party will at some point continue developing the 2.x line further.
The more this continues, the more some technology is going to eat Python's lunch.
If Python wanted to break backwards compatibility they should have done so with some big major changes. That would have been justifiable. Right now no one sees a reason to break backwards compatibility to go to a no-so-ready ecosystem at the expense little gains. At the same time no wants to write 2.x either.
At least people planning to maintain their code base for years aren't going to write in a major version that's going to go away.