[Python-Dev] RELEASED Python 3.0 final

[glyph at divmod.com]

On 5 Dec, 06:10 pm, guido at python.org wrote:
>On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 11:27 PM,  <glyph at divmod.com> wrote:
>>With all due respect, for me, "library support" and "serious use" are
>>synonymous.
>
>Glyph, I cannot have a discussion with you if every single post of
>yours is longer than my combined daily output. Please spend some time
>writing shorter posts. I'm sure I'm not the only one here with a short
>attention span. :-)

I already spend a lot of time trying to remove extraneous details.  The 
drafts of these messages are usually 3x as long :).  So, trying to keep 
it short:

Thomas paraphrased my point pretty well.  The importance of libraries 
cannot be overemphasized.  Maybe you're right and the stdlib is enough 
for a large audience, but I don't know that audience.  Everyone I know 
who uses Python, uses it because of a library.  In some cases, an 
equivalent library exists for another language, and Python wins because 
it has a nicer syntax.  But, in no case does Python win where it 
*doesn't* have the library.

I think that the marketing for py3 needs to target library vendors 
before targeting novices.  If the novices are targeted first, they are 
going to have a bad experience when "python" libraries don't work with 
py3, and library maintainers are going to have a bad experience when 
clueless newbies harass them to update their software without 
understanding the magnitude of the work to do so.

I've been predicting this for years, but two days into Python 3's 
release, I've already seen real-world examples of this pattern in 
#twisted.  I can tell these people to "downgrade" to py2 when they come 
ask me for help, but I don't think most of them ask for help.  They just 
get angry and learn Java instead.