Martijn Faassen: The Call of Python 2.8

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 15 Apr 2014 18:18:16 -0400, Ned Batchelder wrote:

> On 4/15/14 5:34 PM, Joshua Landau wrote:
>> On 15 April 2014 06:03, Marko Rauhamaa <marko at pacujo.net> wrote:
>>> Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu>:
>>>
>>>> Any decent system should have 3.4 available now.
>>>
>>> Really, now? Which system is that?
>>
>> Arch is on 3.4 *default*.
>>
>>      $> python
>>      Python 3.4.0 (default, Mar 17 2014, 23:20:09) [...]
>>
>>
> Yeah, that's the wrong way to do it, and they shouldn't have done that.
>   "python" needs to mean Python 2.x for a long time.

That's a matter of opinion :-)

But Arch is considered pretty gung-ho in this matter, even by people 
(like me) who want "python" to mean "the latest version" rather than 
"something old and decrepit". I recall jokes back when Arch first moved 
to Python 3 as their system Python, that Arch was the bleeding-edge Linux 
distro for those who found Slackware too tame and unadventurous.

For the avoidance of doubt: Python 2.7 is not "old and decripit". Yet. 
But some day it will be. When that time comes, I want "python" to mean 
Python 3.6 or 3.7 or 4.2, or whatever is the most recent version, not 2.7 
or 1.5.



-- 
Steven