Python 2.8 Un-release Schedule

I'm kind of surprised people are surprised that upgrading to 3.x has gone slowly. You can't upgrade a major installed base overnight unless there's incentive. Windows Vista, for example?<p>Additionally, it has stumbling blocks towards achieving the upgrade. Packages you're using aren't upgraded, you have a lot of code dealing with strings, and so on. I worked on a project that tried to use Python 3.x and it was a nightmare in both regards.<p>In my view, Python 3 doesn't offer any major reasons to upgrade other than we've been told to. Someone tell me: what is it that's so compelling about Python 3? For instance, when you click on "What's new in Python 3" on this page, the first thing in the list is "print is a function". Seriously? The FIRST thing in the list is something that breaks code and has very little impact. Unicode has a lot more impact, breaks a lot more stuff, and is doable in 2.x anyway, yet is the 5th or 6th thing in the list.<p>So I'm not really sure what the devs were thinking with Python 3.x. It broke a lot of stuff but didn't break enough to make Python notably better. I was around and a heavy Python user for the 1.x -&#62; 2.x upgrade. That was far easier, had some features I could really use, and there was a much smaller installed base. This time around, I just don't see the reason I should upgrade. Eventually, I imagine I will when support is so far gone that there's no choice, or there's some amazing feature that requires it.<p>For those of you who will respond: "So don't upgrade, or switch off Python". One of those is mission accomplished. The other one remains to be seen, though if Tiobe is at all believed, Python is declining sharply in interest.

Three shall be the version of the Python, and the version of the Python shall be three. Version four shalt thou not use, nor shalt thou use version two, excepting that thou then upgrade to three.<p>Perl 5 is right out.

I've been using Python2 now for 4 years but have been dragging my feet upgrading to Python3.<p>Finally, I started learning it just a month ago and now I don't know what ever stopped me before. In fact, the most annoying thing I've found about Python3 is that my searches for documentation on DDG or Google all go to the Python2 docs.

THis isn't surprising. Python 3 was advertised, back in the time, as "mainstream, please don't bother yet, we'll do a few more 2.x releases while letting the community catch up with jumping through the hoops of Python 3".<p>That is, at the same time when they removed some tried and true language constructs people liked and didn't add more of any powerful features that everyone was hoping for.<p>I bet Python 2.x will dominate for a long time, possibly with PyPy w/ LLVM becoming the de facto implementation instead of the discontinued CPython. Also, another party will at some point continue developing the 2.x line further.

There really should be an effort to get people to write new code in python3 and use 3to2 to backport (rather than writing in python2 and using 2to3 to convert).

<i>In addition, integer division now produces floating point numbers for non-integer results.</i><p>Grr.

Heh, PEP 404. Nice.

I've tried to push Python for many projects at our shop. But it always get shot down by <i>We don't want to write in 2.x series as its going to go away, and 3.x ecosystem isn't ready yet</i>.<p>The more this continues, the more some technology is going to eat Python's lunch.<p>If Python wanted to break backwards compatibility they should have done so with some big major changes. That would have been justifiable. Right now no one sees a reason to break backwards compatibility to go to a no-so-ready ecosystem at the expense little gains. At the same time no wants to write 2.x either.<p>At least people planning to maintain their code base for years aren't going to write in a major version that's going to go away.

For some reason, adoption has been really slow so far; it is disappointing to see so many beginners pick Python 2 over 3. I believe that even MIT and Coursera teach Python 2.

Great reasons to upgrade.<p>But they should also mention they are taking away our beloved print and quick string formatting.

As a Perl guy waiting for Perl 6, I never understood why Python devs were waiting. I'd talk to Python guys and they'd say some library or another was missing. Then I would explain how exciting it was to have a breaking version that fixed defects and warts, and in general making the language better. Of course, I'm still waiting for Perl 6 plus another 5 before adoption. Oh well, I'm glad someone is finally moving ahead.

Love that it is 404 :)