Clear Linux Is The Latest Distribution Figuring Out What To Do With Python 2

[vegabook]

What angst? We have a maybe two or three people complaining about it with vague conspiracy theories and three or four times that many happy about it and hundreds more that don't care one way or the other.

Python 3 vs 2 is even now, controversial. Why not admit it? Pretending that it hasn't been hard work and a source of flame wars is just ignoring reality.

I _have_ moved to 3, by the way. I just don't particularly like it. I see what you refuse to see: it's been a mess, wounds have been created in the community, and you guys don't want to admit fault. I am perfectly happy to admit that I did not invest the time to move, because I didn't have to as 3 wasn't compelling, and I am partly at fault for having contributed to the glacial move. But you guys won't admit any fault when it's staring you in the face: Breaking-change Python 3 delta to Python 2 wasn't big enough to encourage an organic move that didn't require coercing and threats of deprecation.

[Vistaus]

Why exactly "must" Unicode be a top priority? The world didn't globalize suddenly in 2009. The internet has been a big deal since 1990. Python 2 does Unicode just fine where you need it. And UTF8 does it even better if you need it everywhere. Python 3's Unicode-by-default is a poorly thought-through, politically motivated dogma that has a lot more downsides than upsides.

The internet sure has been a big deal since 1990, however, a lot of people didn't have internet access back then. There are lots of people only just starting to use the internet, both in 3rd world countries *and* developed countries.

[TheBlackCat]

Oh please. Thanks for pedantically mansplaining that. The issue is that 99% of the time bytes by default would be better.

Pulling random numbers out of thin air is not an argument. I have constant headaches with a language that has inconsistent unicode handling and I never use non-English words, but I do use math.

Even if interpreting bytes as text by default works in many situations (although not as many as you think since we have little control over what sort of data our code is fed), it silently breaks in many others, leading to extremely difficult to fix bugs. As I said, lots of such bugs were only able to be tracked down and fixed when projects started supporting python 3 because of this explicit distinction.

You keep thinking "this isn't a problem for me" implies "this isn't a problem for anyone". Just because you don't have a problem with something doesn't mean it isn't a problem for anyone. You are not the whole world.

And although you may not care about the basic design principles that underlie the python language, you should at least accept that they exist and are there for a reason.

[TheBlackCat]

Python 3 vs 2 is even now, controversial. Why not admit it? Pretending that it hasn't been hard work and a source of flame wars is just ignoring reality.

It was a big deal a few years ago. I have seen very little about it recently that suggests it is still such a big deal. When such discussions came up in the past we had a ton of people complaining. Now we just have one or two.

I _have_ moved to 3, by the way. I just don't particularly like it.

As people keep asking, besides the distinction between bytes and text, what specifically don't you like? You seem to have one pet peeve that you keep harping on and dismiss the entire last decade of Python development based on it. If it is so bad, why can't you explain exactly what you don't like despite being asked so many times?

I see what you refuse to see: it's been a mess, wounds have been created in the community, and you guys don't want to admit fault.

Even Guido admits that the Python 2 to Python 3 transition wasn't handled as well, and if he had a chance to do it again he would do it differently. I am not aware of anyone who disagrees with that. The argument here is whether the overall design of Python 3 is better than the overall design of Python 2. I here very few people saying that it isn't these days, and those that do seem to just be hung up on the fact that they don't have to ignore the fact that bytes are not necessarily the same thing as text.

Breaking-change Python 3 delta to Python 2 wasn't big enough to encourage an organic move that didn't require coercing and threats of deprecation.

It is not coercion. There simply isn't enough manpower to support development of two different sets of code for this long. The Python developers went out of their way to support it for a long, long time. They extended support for Python 2 way past what they originally planned to make the transition as smooth as possible. But they just can't do it forever, it is taking scarce resources away from improving Python. If there really was such a desire for Python 2, those who wanted it could have stepped up to maintain it. No one would have stopped them. But nobody did, so the Python developers had to make a choice about where they could best spend their time.

[vegabook]

Look the ultimate issue is this. Python 3 made very big mistakes. It wasn't better enough to get people to move. And it broke backward compatibility. If it was going to break compatibility, then it should have done a hell of a lot more for the users than give us unicode by default, asyncio, and type hints (belatedly the latter 2).

Then the devs, like yourselves attacking me, proceeded to pretend nothing was wrong and to treat long-time python 2.7 users as a bunch of idiotic, uncooperative "relics". That's what's caused the rift. The very poor political handling of a technical mistake.

[schmidtbag]

Python 3 vs 2 is even now, controversial. Why not admit it? Pretending that it hasn't been hard work and a source of flame wars is just ignoring reality.

Actually, it isn't controversial, you're just making it that way. You've admitted the differences are minimal, so why are you so angry about it? The only reason there's a flame war is because you, for no objective reason, hate Python 3, while everyone else hates the fact you're holding back progress.

I _have_ moved to 3, by the way. I just don't particularly like it. I see what you refuse to see: it's been a mess, wounds have been created in the community, and you guys don't want to admit fault.

How many times muse we ask: what messes? Who of importance has been wounded? What is at fault if Python 3 works just fine?

But you guys won't admit any fault when it's staring you in the face: Breaking-change Python 3 delta to Python 2 wasn't big enough to encourage an organic move that didn't require coercing and threats of deprecation.

Really... the "breaking-change" is miniscule. As I stated in my original response, it's stuff like adding parenthesis for "print". That'swhat you find unreasonable? Despite that Python 3 comes with scripts to easily convert your code to accommodate the breakages, this is what you're all in a huff about? Grow up, kid.

[schmidtbag]

Look the ultimate issue is this. Python 3 made very big mistakes. It wasn't better enough to get people to move. And it broke backward compatibility. If it was going to break compatibility, then it should have done a hell of a lot more for the users than give us unicode by default, asyncio, and type hints (belatedly the latter 2).

So by that logic, you're saying that first impressions are all that matters, and that if something wasn't perfect the first time around it might as well never be used? Because you still have yet to explain why Python 3 should still be avoided after all these years.

If you actually knew more about the differences other than unicode and asyncio, you'd realize the breakages were necessary in order to continue progress (albeit, some were maybe a bit nitpicky). Anyway as stated before, the breakages are easy to accommodate. If it's really that tough for you to transition your code, either you need to adjust your priorities or you aren't fit to be a programmer.

[Bitter]

Python 3 vs 2 is even now, controversial. Why not admit it? Pretending that it hasn't been hard work and a source of flame wars is just ignoring reality.

I _have_ moved to 3, by the way. I just don't particularly like it. I see what you refuse to see: it's been a mess, wounds have been created in the community, and you guys don't want to admit fault. I am perfectly happy to admit that I did not invest the time to move, because I didn't have to as 3 wasn't compelling, and I am partly at fault for having contributed to the glacial move. But you guys won't admit any fault when it's staring you in the face: Breaking-change Python 3 delta to Python 2 wasn't big enough to encourage an organic move that didn't require coercing and threats of deprecation.

Starting to make some sense there: the transition to Python 3 was not smooth, but it had valid reasons to make the breakage it made, and now with Python 3.6 it really is with no doubt better then Python 2.7.

[vegabook]

Starting to make some sense there: the transition to Python 3 was not smooth, but it had valid reasons to make the breakage it made, and now with Python 3.6 it really is with no doubt better then Python 2.7.

Thank you. Sense indeed. And yes 3.6 is better than 2.7. Finally.

[nomadewolf]

I'd take Win95 OSR2 over ME any day.

I used to think like you until i installed both for ol' times sake...
And Win 95 is just too old. My memories of using it are good. But it shows it's age in every aspect.
ME is also bad. But it's more usable.

And to be fair, at lest IMO, Win ME worked very well, IF you take into account that it was comprised of a random mix of assets between Win98 and Win NT 4...