Why has python3 been created as a seperate language where there is still python2.7 ?

[rantingrickjohnson at gmail.com]

On Tuesday, June 26, 2012 1:34:03 AM UTC-5, Stefan Behnel wrote:
> First of all, the statement has a rather special syntax that is not obvious
> and practically non-extensible. It also has hidden semantics that are hard
> to explain and mixes formatting with output - soft-space, anyone?
> 
> The function is straight forward, configurable, does one thing, works with
> help() and doesn't get in the way. And something as rarely[1] used as a
> print simply doesn't deserve special syntax. Oh, and, yes, you can even
> pass it into some code as callback, although I rarely had a need for that.
> 
> Stefan
> 
> 
> [1] Seriously, it's not very helpful in interactive mode and too simplistic
> to be used in application code. Even scripts often work better with logging
> than with prints.

Unfortunately, even though "print" is supposedly only used by the neophytes, the python<3.0 stdlib is full of print statements. For instance, out of 3173 files, 986 contained the word "print"[1]. Heck just in the Lib folder alone (without recusing down sub directories) there are 1352 instances of "print" in a "py" file! 

Naive Nancy Mused: "If only neophtes use print, and the Python Lib is full of prints statements, then the python developers must be...OH DEAR GAWD!"

[1] of course that is when using `filestr.count("print")` -- I assume that the word "print" is not used excessively in comments or docstrings. Someone else can do a less naive search if they like.