"More About Unicode in Python 2 and 3"

[Antoine Pitrou]

Ned Batchelder <ned <at> nedbatchelder.com> writes:
> 
> You can look through his problems and decide that he's "wrong," or that 
> he's "ranting," but that doesn't change the fact that Python 3 is 
> encountering friction.  What happens when a significant fraction of your 
> customers are "wrong"?

Well, yes, there is some friction and this is quite expectable, when
shipping incompatible changes. Other pieces of software have undergone a
similar process (e.g. Apache 1.x -> Apache 2.x).

(the alternative is to maintain a piece of software that sticks with obsolete
conventions, e.g. emacs)

> Core developers: I thank you for the countless hours you have devoted to 
> building all of the versions of Python.  I'm sure in many ways it's a 
> thankless task.  But you have a problem.  What's the point in being 
> right if you end up with a product that people don't use?

People don't use? According to available figures, there are more downloads of
Python 3 than downloads of Python 2 (Windows installers, mostly):
http://www.python.org/webstats/

The number of Python 3-compatible packages has been showing a constant and
healthy increase for years:
http://dev.pocoo.org/~gbrandl/py3.html

And Dan's survey shows 77% of respondents think Python 3 wasn't a mistake:
https://wiki.python.org/moin/2.x-vs-3.x-survey

> Maybe there are core developers who are trying hard to solve the 
> problems Kenneth and Armin are facing.  It would be great if that work 
> was more visible.  I don't see it, and apparently Armin doesn't either.

While this is being discussed:
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2014-January/130923.html

I would still point out that "Kenneth and Armin" are not the whole Python
community. Your whole argument seems to be that a couple "revered" (!!)
individuals should see their complaints taken for granted. I am opposed to 
rockstarizing the community.

Their contribution is always welcome, of course.

(as for network programming, the people working on and with asyncio don't
seem to find Python 3 terrible)

Regards

Antoine.