On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 12:16 PM, Ned Batchelder <n...@nedbatchelder.com> wrote: > So now we have two revered developers vocally having trouble with Python 3. > You can dismiss their concerns as niche because it's only network > programming, but that would be a mistake.
IMO, network programming (at least on the internet) is even more Py3's domain (pun not intended). 1) The internet is global. You WILL come across other languages, other scripts, everything. 2) In most cases, everything is clearly either text or binary, and usually text has an associated (and very clear) encoding (eg HTTP headers). If it's not explicitly given, the RFCs will often stipulate what the encoding should be. It's pretty easy, you don't have to go "Is this Latin-1? Maybe CP-1252? Could it be something else?". 3) The likelihood is high that you'll be working with someone else's code at the other end. Ties in with #2 - this is why the specs are so carefully written. Getting these things right is incredibly important. If I'm writing something that might have to work with anything from anywhere, I want a system that catches potential errors earlier rather than later. I don't want to write interpolated SQL that works perfectly until Mr O'Hara tries to sign up (or, worse, young Robert whose sister is named "Help I'm trapped in a driver's license factory"); I want to get it right from the start. Yes, that means more work to get "Hello, World" going. Yes, it means that I need to get my head around stuff that I didn't think I'd have to. (One time I implemented Oauth manually rather than using a library - the immediate reason was some kind of issue with the library, but I was glad I did, because it meant I actually understood what was going on; came in handy about two weeks later when the far end had a protocol problem.) Most of the complaints about Py3 are "it's harder to get something started (or port from Py2)". My answer is that it's easier to get something finished. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
