[IPython-dev] [sympy] Treating Python 3 as a first-class citizen

[Fernando Perez]

On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 2:35 PM, Aaron Meurer <asmeurer at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Fernando Perez <fperez.net at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Ondrej,
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 5, 2013 at 9:05 PM, Ondřej Čertík <ondrej.certik at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Fernando, I would be very much interested what you think of this
>>> issue, as you have more touch with the Python core devs.
>>
>> I don't really have any particular insights on this one.  But I am
>> concerned about the fact that, even with a unified 2/3 codebase (which
>> I agree is the right approach and which we'll move towards in
>> IPython), we're going to be living in this funky 2+3 (5 ?) ghetto for
>> a long time to come. It's true that we can now write single-codebase
>> codes, esp. cleanly if we're willing to drop both 2.6 and 3.2.   But
>> that means not using any of the new and sometimes appealing features
>> of the language, like 'yield from', function type annotations, or new
>> features in the library like concurrent.futures.
>
> That's nothing new, though. You couldn't use with statements or
> ternary statements if you wanted to support 2.4, you couldn't use
> new-style string formatting if you wanted to support 2.5, and you
> can't use set literals or dictionary comprehensions if you want to
> support 2.6.

That's true, but since the gap (perceived or otherwise) between 2 and
3 is larger than the one between 2.x and 2.y, I think the impact is
much more significant in this case. Hence why I think that mitigation
measures would be warranted here, beyond what would be considered
necessary for a 2.x -> 2.x+1.

Cheers,

f
-- 
Fernando Perez (@fperez_org; http://fperez.org)
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