Python 2.8: +1

Python 2.8: +1

Armin Ronacher bravely shares his thoughts on Python 3.

He also says: "Can we reopen the option of doing a Python 2.8 if it makes porting easier?"

A big +1 from me. Declaring that a Python 2.8 is never going to happen is just bizarre from my perspective. What is this supposed to accomplish? Encourage people to port code to Python 3? And if so, is this really the right way to encourage people?

Why do I use the word bravely? Because when I shared my worries about the upgrade discontinuity between Python 2 and Python 3 back in 2007, I got burned pretty badly in the ensuing discussions. Please don't hurt Armin: what he's doing is very brave and I'm very glad someone is speaking up about this topic.

I did think, back then, that I had something to contribute to this discussion: I've been through the Zope 2 and Zope 3 mess as an active participant. It's been sort of resolved now. It took about 10 years. People are still using Zope 2 and that's what's called "Zope" today. People are using what was called Zope 3 too, as part of Zope, and as part of other systems with different names. The Zope community is now a bunch of pieces. Now Python is a programming language, not a web framework, and the situations are not identical at all (there are MANY points of difference), but it does inform my perspective on the situation the Python community finds itself in.

I've been somewhat reluctant to share my opinions about the Python 3 situation in public since then. But what the heck.

I know what else a "Never a Python 2.8" decision by the core team might encourage: a Python 2.x maintenance fork done by other people. And the resulting situation would be a mess. I hope we can avoid that.

P.S. Disclaimer: this is not to be construed as a criticism of the technical merits of Python 3, the efforts of involved developers to make code run on Python 3, and it's not to be construed as a criticism on the intelligence or wisdom of Python developers anywhere. Python is awesome! Please don't hurt me!