[Pandas-dev] Just a quick question from a regular pandas user

[Pietro Battiston]

Dear devs,

every time that "pandas 2" comes out, it is (it seems to me) not
because of our concrete plans for it, or even because it is used as
inspiration for current pandas (which by the way is receiving great and
substantial improvements), but because some user is confused by the
docs/issues mentioning it.

I know it is somewhat of a rhetorical question - because we ourselves
always considered "pandas 2" first and foremost as a direction to take
(or at least discuss) rather than as a version to release - but I'm
wondering whether having pandas 2 mentioned, discussed and postponed
(inevitably, as we are not even really targeting at it) is really
helpful, and in particular whether the separate github project is
really helpful.

I see two options:
- spend serious effort in communicating users what/when to expect (and
not to expect) from pandas 2
- delete any mention to pandas 2 from our github and from the "pandas
2.0 Design Documents" - which could be just described as "the future of
pandas"

... which clearly doesn't mean we do not need to introduce important
changes in pandas (this is happening daily), or that there shouldn't be a version 2.0 some day.

This is some of the "confused users" I have in mind:
https://www.reddit.com/r/datascience/comments/8rcoou/what_happened_to_pandas_2/

Cheers,

Pietro

Il giorno ven, 29/11/2019 alle 12.05 +0100, Joris Van den Bossche ha
scritto:
> Hi Martin,
> 
> The 2.0 milestone is not updated for a very long time, and also not
> yet really used (there are a few issues tagged with it to mean "maybe
> in a next big release but not yet in 1.0"). So I wouldn't look too
> much to that. In any case, we are certainly not going to do a pandas
> 2.0 release in summer 2020 (so we should update the milestone date).
> 
> What we do plan is a final 1.0 release in early 2020. What we also
> discussed recently is a version policy for starting with 1.0: 
> https://dev.pandas.io/docs/development/policies.html#version-policy 
> This means that code working with 1.0 should mostly keep working in
> the full 1.x series of releases when not using experimental features
> (although we will keep doing deprecations, so you still might need to
> change code to get rid of such warnings, in preparation of pandas
> 2.0).
> 
> And you are correct: pandas 1.0 will not be drastically different
> from 0.25.3 (the main difference will be that a lot of things that
> were deprecated before will now be removed, plus some documented API
> changes). While we do not yet have much concrete plans for pandas
> 2.0, I think the expectation is that it will be similar (and also not
> something for the coming year anyway).
> 
> So if you are writing code now for 0.25.3, and you take notice of
> possible deprecation warnings and fix your code for those, you can be
> ensured that your code will mostly work on 1.0 as well. 
> Now, it is still very recommended to ensure you write tests for your
> code, so you can run those on new pandas releases to verify this is
> indeed the case (and running such tests on release candidates of new
> pandas releases is also very valuable, so potential regressions can
> be reported and fixed early).
> 
> Hopefully that could shed some light
> Joris
> 
> 
> On Fri, 29 Nov 2019 at 05:42, Martin Gantchev <bms91 at abv.bg> wrote:
> > Dear Representatives of Pandas-dev,
> > 
> > This is Martin here, a regular user of the pandas library.
> > 
> > First of all, thank you for providing, maintaining and still
> > developing this amazing library which I use pretty much every day.
> > 
> > On that note, I am facing a project that will involve working with
> > pandas heavily, but that is supposed to retain the code for a long
> > period of time (hopefully, for years to come).
> > 
> > I am referring to this piece of information:
> > 
> > https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/milestones
> > 
> > It seems that pandas 1.0 has 90% completion rate, while pandas 2.0
> > is expected to be ready for as early as August 2020, however it
> > strangely has just 10 problems that need to be solved.
> > 
> > Of course, no precise answer is requested. However, I am afraid
> > that in the next couple of months I may write code that might
> > become obsolete in the middle of next summer. Am I right about
> > that?
> > 
> > I did read around the internet and read more articles, so I don't
> > expect neither 1.0 or 2.0 to be drastically different from 0.25.3.
> > At least, I guess most of the code I'd use in 0.25.3 should work
> > normally under 1.0 or 2.0. Is that correct?
> > 
> > Shedding light on this subject may save tons of worries for me, so
> > even a loose delineation of your schedule and the potential impact
> > it may have on code written in 0.25.3 would be greatly appreciated.
> > 
> > Thank you very much!
> > 
> > Looking forward to your answer.
> > Best,
> > Martin
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Pandas-dev at python.org
> > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pandas-dev
> 
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