New Python 3.0 string formatting - really necessary?

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

walterbyrd a écrit :
> On Dec 21, 12:28 pm, Bruno Desthuilliers
> <bdesth.quelquech... at free.quelquepart.fr> wrote:
>> Strange enough,
>> no one seems to complain about PHP or Ruby's performances...
> 
> A few years back, there was a certain amount of chest thumping, when
> python/django easily beat ror in a benchmark test.

I don't remember it, and honestly, I just don't give a damn.

> Now that ruby is
> faster,

"faster" than what ? Than Python ? or than it's previous version ?

> I guess speed is no big issue.

Please use your google-fu (if you have any). As far as I'm concerned, my 
position didn't change these 7+ past years: Python is (and has always 
been) fast enough for most of what I use it for (and when it isn't, 
neither PHP nor Ruby are going to be solution anyway).

Now improvements are always welcomes, and if you compare 1.5.2 with 
2.5.1, you'll find out that the core developpers did improve Python's 
perfs.

Now do you have any serious argument, or are you just trolling ?

> By the same reasoning, python advocates used to sneer at php because
> php constantly broke backward compatibility. Now that python does it,
> breaking backward compatibility is no big deal.

There's a lot 1.5.2 days code still running *unmodified* on 2.6.x. 
You'll have hard time finding (non-trivial, and even then) PHP3 code 
running unmodified on PHP5.

> I guess unicode
> support was not that important, until python caught up to perl.
> 
> I guess, the way it works is: you first assume that python is
> superior, then you figure out why.

Whoever said Python was "superior" (except your good friend 'r') ?

As far as I'm concerned, I don't think Python is "superior" (OMG), I 
think it's a good language that happens to fit my brain *and* solve more 
than 80% of my programmer's needs. If you're not happy with Python's 
perfs, please contribute, you are welcome.