On 1/6/14 11:29 AM, Antoine Pitrou wrote:
Ned Batchelder <ned <at> nedbatchelder.com> writes:
You can look through his problems and decide that he's "wrong," or that
he's "ranting," but that doesn't change the fact that Python 3 is
encountering friction. What happens when a significant fraction of your
customers are "wrong"?
Well, yes, there is some friction and this is quite expectable, when
shipping incompatible changes. Other pieces of software have undergone a
similar process (e.g. Apache 1.x -> Apache 2.x).
(the alternative is to maintain a piece of software that sticks with obsolete
conventions, e.g. emacs)
Core developers: I thank you for the countless hours you have devoted to
building all of the versions of Python. I'm sure in many ways it's a
thankless task. But you have a problem. What's the point in being
right if you end up with a product that people don't use?
People don't use? According to available figures, there are more downloads of
Python 3 than downloads of Python 2 (Windows installers, mostly):
http://www.python.org/webstats/
The number of Python 3-compatible packages has been showing a constant and
healthy increase for years:
http://dev.pocoo.org/~gbrandl/py3.html
And Dan's survey shows 77% of respondents think Python 3 wasn't a mistake:
https://wiki.python.org/moin/2.x-vs-3.x-survey
Maybe there are core developers who are trying hard to solve the
problems Kenneth and Armin are facing. It would be great if that work
was more visible. I don't see it, and apparently Armin doesn't either.
While this is being discussed:
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2014-January/130923.html
I would still point out that "Kenneth and Armin" are not the whole Python
community.
I never said they were the whole community, of course. But they are not
outliers either. By your own statistics above, 23% of respondents think
Python 3 was a mistake. Armin and Kenneth are just two very visible people.
Your whole argument seems to be that a couple "revered" (!!)
individuals should see their complaints taken for granted. I am opposed to
rockstarizing the community.
I'm not creating rock stars. I'm acknowledging that these two people
are listened to by many others. It sounds like part of your effort to
avoid rockstars is to ignore any one person's specific feedback? I must
be misunderstanding what you mean.
Their contribution is always welcome, of course.
(as for network programming, the people working on and with asyncio don't
seem to find Python 3 terrible)
Some people don't have problems. That doesn't mean that other people
don't have problems.
You are being given detailed specific feedback from intelligent
dedicated customers that many people listen to, and who are building
important components of the ecosystem, and your response is, "sorry, you
are wrong, it will be fine if I ignore you." That's disheartening.
Regards
Antoine.
--
Ned Batchelder, http://nedbatchelder.com
--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
