Python 3.x adoption

[Travis Griggs]

Looks like the 2/3 topic has lain fallow for a couple of days, gotta keep it burning…

I’m  a relatively recent python convert, but been coding and talking to others about coding for many moons on this big blue orb. I think the industrial side of this debate has been talked up quite a bit. We have tools, we have the wall of shame/superpowers for libraries and projects.

I think the desires of the core of people moving python forward are pretty clear to those of us that plug in. Move to 3. Period. We can debate, hate it, go on all day, but they’ve been pretty steady.

I’ve had a bunch of interns around me lately though, wanting to get into python, and this is where I find the momentum really breaks down. If newcomers go to take an online course in python, they might try MIT’s Open Courseware (who doesn’t want to learn from the illustrious MIT after all?). They’ll be taught Python 2, not 3. Or they might try Code Academy. Again, they’ll be taught 2, not 3. If the newbie googles “python reference”… top link will be python 2.

So in my mind, the wall of superpowers/shame is no longer well aligned with where the real battlefront of adoption is at. The legacy of the internet caches and education sites are. Personally, I have no idea why an education site would favor a version that sooner or later they’re going to have to try and explain how super() works.

The other area, I think, that puts a dent in perceived adoption is in alternate interpreters. Back in the day, everyone was making some branch of python (e.g. IronPython, Jython, Cython, PyPy, Stackless, etc). All of them did python 2. Very few are doing python 3. Some have been abandoned (as is the nature of research endeavors like these were), but there doesn’t seem to be the broad swath of people still building alternate python expressions, especially in python 3. Being a fan of JIT, I have big hopes for PyPy, I can’t figure out why they aren’t pitching their “cutting edge” interpreter, for the “cutting edge” version of python. There should be a wall of superpowers/shame for interpreters.