Future of Pypy?

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, Feb 24, 2015 at 5:56 PM, Steven D'Aprano
<steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:
> Most people are not using the bleeding edge version of Python, and even
> those who do, aren't usually using it in production. There are still plenty
> of people using Python 2.3 in production, and even a few using 1.5.
>
> But as you say, there are good reasons for wishing to stick to CPython over
> Jython, IronPython, PyPy or Stackless, let alone less mature or experimental
> implementations. I get that.

Yes, not everyone is running Python 3.5 in production, I totally get
that :) But if I'm writing an app to run on Debian or Ubuntu, I can
depend on there being a CPython 3.x available, even on the oldest
currently-supported releases (Ubuntu Lucid and Debian Squeeze both
ship Python 3.1), and it won't be long before saying "requires Python
3.3" won't be a problem. Plus, you can always compile CPython from
source on any Unix-like system, or download the .msi for Windows, and
run 3.4 with no problems. But if you want to use PyPy, Jython, or any
other implementation of the language, you're quite possibly stuck on
2.x, or if 3.x support does exist, it's the new and experimental code.
Even a willingness to compile from source won't get you past that, so
using any of the new features of Python 3.x is likely to cut out some
of the alternate interpreters.

It's fine to use Python 2.3 if that's all you need (and if you don't
need any bug fixes from python.org, which presumably means you have
security support from someone else). But it's also fine to want to use
a newer Python. It'd be nice if all the major Pythons supported 3.4,
but the reality of volunteer time is that CPython is pretty much
always going to be in the lead.

ChrisA