Python 3.0 unfit for serious work?

[Jay Tee]

Yo,

On Feb 16, 6:07 am, Steven Bethard <steven.beth... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Python 3.0 is determined not to be hampered by backwards incompatibility
> concerns. It's not even clear yet that your average 2.6 code will work

Then Python is pretty much determined to remove itself from
consideration
from various kinds of international projects like the one I work on.
We're already catching flack from people due to a few things that were
valid
in 2.2 that are not valid in 2.3 (I don't have the details but could
scare them
up).  The project we work on contains code from many different people
and has to
run on thousands of computers all over the world.  The installed base
at the
moment is a mix of RHEL 3, RHEL 4, and Debian, with a few other
machines thrown in.
The relevant Python versions at this moment IIRC are 2.2.3 and 2.3.4,
because these
are the native versions on those platforms.

We are estimating, due to the speed at which our applications follow
OS releases, that
we can drop RHEL 3 (and hence Python 2.2) support a year from now.  Go
figure when you
think we might be ready to require that all programs run on python
3.0.  If it's not
backwards compatible, meaning if 2.4 code doesn't run on 3.0, it's
rather likely that
strong pressure will be applied to port *away* from Python into
something less capricious.

Bottom line: practicality and beauty is always a tradeoff.  Oberon is
the most beautiful
language I ever saw, but there is almost nobody using it any more.
Too many beauty contests over who had the best proposal for a standard
library.