py3k s***s

Aaron Watters aaron.watters at gmail.com
Wed Apr 16 14:10:20 EDT 2008


On Apr 16, 1:42 pm, Rhamphoryncus <rha... at gmail.com> wrote:
>   The only reason to not make the
> changes is that old, crufty, unmaintained libraries & applications
> might depend on them somehow.  If that's more important to you, what
> you really want is a language who's specs are frozen - much like C
> effectively is.  I hope python doesn't become that for a long time
> yet, as there's too much it could do better.

I'm feeling a bit old, crufty, and unmaintained myself,
but I'll try not to take offense.

There is a difference between something that works fine
until the rug gets pulled out and something that needs fixing.
It's a shame to junk stuff that works.

Also in the case of C/java etc changing the infrastructure
is less scary because you usually find out about problems
when the compile or link fails.  For Python you may not find
out about it until the program has been run many times.
Perhaps this will inspire improved linters and better coding
practices....

I suppose if the py3k migration inspires tons of
insomniac young programmers to seek fame and admiration
by cleaning up ancient libraries, it would be a good
thing.  It seems to have happened in the Perl4->5
migration some years ago.  Could happen again.
   -- Aaron Watters

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