Python 2 to 3 conversion - embrace the pain

[Terry Reedy]

On 3/16/2015 1:07 AM, Paul Rubin wrote:

> I saved a quote from Hacker News a while back (I don't know who the
> author is):
>
>      "You know why I'm not running python 3?
 >       Because it doesn't solve a single problem I have.

Quite possibly true.

 >        It doesn't solve anyone's problems. It solves
>      imaginary problems, while creating real problems."

A blatent, selfish lie.

>        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7802575
>
> I think the person went a bit overboard,

I call it more than a bit overboard.  But anyway ...

> but other than the Unicode revamp I don't know what Python 3
 > improvements couldn't have been done
> in Python 2 without breaking anything.

Every change potentially breaks something.  (How would you have changed 
1/2 from 0 to .5 without breaking anything?) The issue is cost versus 
gain.  We do maintenance bugfix releases because the gain for bugfixes, 
and the gain of applying them immediately, is *usually* considered 
greater than the cost.  Some bugfixes are delayed to the 'next' version. 
  Non-bugfix changes require deprecation for at least one version before 
making the change.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy