[Python-Dev] Internal representation of strings and Micropython

[Nick Coghlan]

On 6 June 2014 21:15, Paul Sokolovsky <pmiscml at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On Thu, 5 Jun 2014 23:15:54 +1000
> Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 5 June 2014 22:37, Paul Sokolovsky <pmiscml at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > On Thu, 5 Jun 2014 22:20:04 +1000
>> > Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> problems caused by trusting the locale encoding to be correct, but
>> >> the startup code will need non-trivial changes for that to happen
>> >> - the C.UTF-8 locale may even become widespread before we get
>> >> there).
>> >
>> > ... And until those golden times come, it would be nice if Python
>> > did not force its perfect world model, which unfortunately is not
>> > based on surrounding reality, and let users solve their encoding
>> > problems themselves - when they need, because again, one can go
>> > quite a long way without dealing with encodings at all. Whereas now
>> > Python3 forces users to deal with encoding almost universally, but
>> > forcing a particular for all strings (which is again, doesn't
>> > correspond to the state of surrounding reality). I already hear
>> > response that it's good that users taught to deal with encoding,
>> > that will make them write correct programs, but that's a bit far
>> > away from the original aim of making it write "correct" programs
>> > easy and pleasant. (And definition of "correct" vary.)
>>
>> As I've said before in other contexts, find me Windows, Mac OS X and
>> JVM developers, or educators and scientists that are as concerned by
>> the text model changes as folks that are primarily focused on Linux
>> system (including network) programming, and I'll be more willing to
>> concede the point.
>
> Well, but this question reduces to finding out (or specifying) who are
> target audiences of Python. It always has been (with a bow to Guido)
> forpost of scientific users (and probably even if there was mass exodus
> of other categories of users will remain prominent in that role). But
> Python has always had its share as system scripting language among
> Perl-haters, and with Perl going flatline, I guess it's fair to say
> that Python is major system scripting and service implementation
> language.

Correct - and the efforts of a number of core developers are focused
on getting the Linux distros and major projects like OpenStack
migrated. If other Linux users say "I'm not switching to Python 3
until after my distro has switched their own Python applications
over", that's a perfectly reasonable course of action for them to
take. After all, that approach to the adoption of new Python versions
is a large part of why Python 2.6 is still so widely supported by
library and framework developers: enterprise Linux distros haven't
even finished migrating to Python 2.7 yet, let alone Python 3. (The
other reason is that the language moratorium that was applied to
Python 2.7 and 3.2 means that supporting back to Python 2.6 isn't that
much harder than supporting 2.7 at this point in time).

That said, the feedback from the early adopters of Python 3 on Linux
is proving invaluable, and Linux users in general will benefit from
their work as the distros move their infrastructure applications over.

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia