the Gravity of Python 2

[Chris Angelico]

On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 2:22 AM, Martijn Faassen <faassen at startifact.com> wrote:
> I'm pointing out possible improvements that Python 2.8 could offer that
> would help incremental porting efforts of applications. I'm pointing about
> that helping application developers move forward incrementally may be a
> worthwhile consideration. Like, there's money there.

I'm not sure who's actually paying the PSF to develop a 2.8, so I'm
not sure why you can say there's money there. Are you offering? Or do
you have reason to believe someone else will?

> You can point out that 2.6 and 2.7 were already such releases, and I will
> then point out that many people *have* upgraded their applications to these
> releases. Is there now going to be a giant leap forward to Python 3 by these
> projects, or is the jump still too far? Opinions differ.

Still waiting for a solid suggestion as to what would actually be
different in 2.8 that can't be done with a module. If there's a really
brilliant module that massively eases the burden of porting, then
python.org / the PSF might well even add it to the stdlib, or at least
point people to it from the home page. That would make for an
excellent "smooth upgrade" path, dealing with the renamed modules and
so on, and it takes no language changes at all.

I'm pretty sure most people here are in broad agreement with your goal
of making it easy to migrate to Py3. What we're not seeing - or at
least, what I'm not seeing - is how a Python 2.8 would achieve that;
and what several of us ARE seeing is how a Python 2.8 actually makes
it harder.

ChrisA