[Python-ideas] Smoothing transition to Python 3

[Nick Coghlan]

On 7 June 2016 at 11:27, Thomas Güttler <guettliml at thomas-guettler.de> wrote:
> Am 07.06.2016 um 13:34 schrieb Steven D'Aprano:
>> On Tue, Jun 07, 2016 at 12:42:44PM +0200, Thomas Güttler wrote:
>>
>>> I am not married with Python. Up to now I see no alternative for me,
>>> but I guess sooner or later I will switch to a different
>>> language.
>>>
>>> I see only few benefits from porting my code to Python3. I will
>>> use Python2 at least for the next 12 months.
>>
>> That's your right, of course. Some people love to experiment with new
>> languages, some don't. But...
>>
>> What will this other language be, and what does it offer that makes it
>> better than Python 3?
>
> I would love to see "compile to javascript" support.

Not a problem for python-dev to tackle - there are plenty of
Python-in-the-browser projects, and they don't need to wait for
python-dev's permission (since they're taking the existing language
and making it available in a new context, rather than changing the
language). They'd only need to come back to python-dev if they wanted
language level support for browser concepts like WebWorkers and the
Domain Object Model.

> I would love to see a package management that is easy to use and which
> focuses on simple data structures.

Also not python-dev's problem - that one falls on distutils-sig, PyPA
and the PSF (but unfortunately is never going to be entirely simple
given Python's broad scope of use).

> Does Python3 run in web browsers? Or is it possible to compile it to
> javascript?

Again, these are software distribution questions, not language design questions.

> I guess I will port my python2 code to python3 sooner or later. If
> Django drops support for Python2, then I will do it.

Exactly, and this is what we expect most folks with problems that are
already well solved by Python 2 to do: it won't be the availability of
alternatives that prompts them to find something else (since there are
already a number of those in the form of both Python 3 and other
language ecosystems), it will be folks ceasing to support the Python 2
ecosystem for free. By the time upstream Python 2.7 support ends in
2020, there will have been ~14 years of parallel development on both
Python 2.x and 3.x, and ~12 years of parallel support.

This isn't a new phenomenon - it's one that's seen regularly at the
operating system level, to the point where people will pay exhorbitant
amounts of money to keep old software supported, even though they
could attain both happier staff and lower operating costs by doing a
bit more forward planning and budgeting for their infrastructure
upgrades.

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia