[STORY-TIME] THE BDFL AND HIS PYTHON PETTING ZOO

[John Ladasky]

On Saturday, February 6, 2016 at 12:54:41 PM UTC-8, Rick Johnson wrote:
> On Wednesday, February 3, 2016 at 12:02:35 AM UTC-6, John Ladasky wrote:
> 
> > Rick, you don't like Python?  
> 
> If i didn't like Python, then i would happily let it self-
> destruct, yes? The problem is, i *DO* like Python. Python2
> was a great language, but python3 has been a disaster. Heck,
> even the BDFL has warned that Python4 cannot introduce as
> many backwards incompatible changes as python3. So obviously,
> he is admitting that Python3 was a disaster.

I had to wait until my favorite packages were ported (numpy, scipy, matplotlib, pandas).  But once that happened, I moved from Py2 to Py3 years ago with scarcely a bump, bruise, or scratch.  

I like lazy evaluation.  I think that Unicode handling is vastly improved (and yes, I'm fully aware that exactly two people in this newsgroup don't agree, they make sure we all know).  I have encountered few surprises, and nothing that makes my job harder.  

To be sure, people who are entrenched in the Py2 way of doing things, with a lot of legacy code, have some work to do -- on their code, and possibly on their brains.  Keep Py2 if you want it, then.  You still have a few more years before the PSF stops maintaining it.  If you really like it that much, why not maintain it yourself?