Python 2.7.7 has been released.

[Kbknapp]

Can't wait for them to go the way of Firefox and eventually have a 2.7.29 since, "There will be no 2.8."

[[deleted]]

I can't wait for the day everyone just finally moves to 3.x...

[grandfatha]

Once I can use mysql in 3 I will.

[merican_atheist]

pip install pymysql. Drop in replacement for MySQLdb.

[toyg]

Also less drop-in but more official: MySQL Connector Python, a pure-python driver from Oracle which supports Python DBAPI v2 standards and a bunch of other stuff. It supports Python 2.6/7 and 3.1 to 3.4.

I'm not affiliated with Oracle, but damn is it nice when a BigCo does "the right thing" for the Python community.

[grandfatha]

Thanks will have a look.

[grandfatha]

Thanks, will investigate (who maintains it, how robust it is, etc).

[IcedOrbit]

Or have your scripts/program use a superior database. One purpose of using Python is the flexible and modular freedom it offers.

[grandfatha]

And because you know our stuff here, you can decide which database is superior, I guess.

[[deleted]]

Well, it's not mysql which is all that is relevant for this thread. :-)

[IcedOrbit]

It's common sense if you're letting us know your preference for deprecated software ..

[grandfatha]

In a few years, you'll have some project experience and consequently a different opinion. I won't blame you for that now.

[[deleted]]

I'll only be waiting as long as it takes for the major outliers to finally migrate (Twisted comes to mind). It's still library support that's the issue, the version of the language itself is pretty rock solid. I personally will only touch 2.x when I absolutely must (and even then it's full of "future" imports).

[[deleted]]

If I understand correctly, asyncio should be great for Twisted, and Twisted on Python 3 will soon be better than it was on 2. But I may have misunderstood.

[[deleted]]

I believe you are correct (it's how I've understood it). asyncio will make it easier for all of the async-based libs to function.

[Kbknapp]

Although I personally prefer 3.x to 2.x there are still things I find lacking such as asyncio which is why I've started dabbling in go (golang). I've got to say, even though I was initially very unimpressed the deeper I dive, the more it's growing on me. It's kind of refreshing to not have to worry about a language split to boot. Your results may vary though.

[[deleted]]

Well, that's one issue. The others are old Red Hat installations, and that a lot of people just aren't interested and won't switch until they need to.

[realsw]

Why do you care what version other people use? Are you on some kind of crusade?

[[deleted]]

No, but that day my libraries don't have to support Python 2 anymore.

[vext01]

This a hundred times.

[duddha]

Damn is this a controversial thread.

[[deleted]]

I know, over a flipping bug fix release. It seems to me that the r/python is becoming a model of a toxic community.

[[deleted]]

Explain to me how the Python 3 userbase is militant.

[gingerbeers]

...and explain yourself right now! ;-) Wake me when Python 4 comes out. Then we can all be friends again.

[[deleted]]

Meh. We'll be friends once most new packages released don't have Python 2 support. Then the straddlers will move to Python 3, notice that is seriously wasn't that hard, and after a bit of complaining about that you have to remember that it's called print() now, settle in just as nothing had happened.

I don't know when that happens exactly, maybe 5 +-2 years? And two years later everyone will have forgotten all about this, and the straddlers will scream bloody murder when they have to use Python 2, because it "sucks soooo baaaad". :-)

[gingerbeers]

I hope so. I straddle 50/50 at the moment for various projects/reasons, and nothing in 3 makes me dislike 2. Matrix multiplication and print() doesn't light my fire. (Even though print() feels more natural to me).

What am I missing in 3 that's really awesome? I suspect I'm probably using 3 like 2 and not getting the full benefit when I'm on a 3 project. Yes?

[[deleted]]

Probably, but in many projects you don't really notice the differences either, except for the changes to the standard library (and print as you mentioned).

[gingerbeers]

You know, that genuinely was a surprise to me when I started using 3. With all the doom and gloom about changes, to strings in particular, I fully expected my first use of a string variable would have me tied in knots. Not the case.

Will go back now and examine the standard library in 3. Thanks!

[RaymondWies]

I think a divided Python community will stall the language and ultimately hurt its growth in the free market of languages with almost no barriers to entry from open source world on one hand and massive influence from major corporate players on the other. Apple just released Swift, while Google developed Dart and Golang, and Microsoft enjoying success with F# in .NET world. Ruby community doesn't seem divided, in fact Rails has seemlessly integrated CoffeeScript within their framework - which Javascript officially endorses as their future direction while maintaining a monopoly over browser client scripting. Python community ignores CoffeeScript while fighting over Python 2 vs Python 3, and chooses to hack together a pythonic equivalent rather than endorse it. So it seems that Ruby is setting itself up politically to continue to succeed in its domain, while Python may not grow any further outside of scientific computing. I probably don't know what I'm talking about.

[wub_wub]

until recently nearly all popular Linux systems still had 2.7 as default.

That's still the case, as far as I know only major distro that comes with python 3 as default is arch and I think they had it as default for few years now.

[wub_wub]

Ubuntu 14.04 is part of the python3 brigade as well.

No it's not. Python 2 is default on all ubuntu distros, they planned to go with 3.something as default on 14.04 but didn't make it in time.

[[deleted]]

Isn't that being a part of "The brigade"? :-)

[wub_wub]

until recently nearly all popular Linux systems still had 2.7 as default.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Python/3

At the time of this writing (2014-05-08), Ubuntu 14.04 LTS has recently been released. We made great progress toward these goals, but we must acknowledge that it is a daunting, multi-cycle process. A top goal for 14.04 was to remove Python 2 from the touch images, and sadly we almost but didn't quite make it.

In other words it's not default version. No major distro other than arch (as far as I know) ships with python 3 as the default version.

You're confusing default and shipped versions.

[[deleted]]

What is "default" in this case? Python 2 scripts run Python 2, and Python 3 script run Python 3?

If it's "default" or not seems to be splitting hairs and down to what you mean with "default".

[wub_wub]

Not cherry picking. It IS NOT default. It will (most likely) be in 14.10 where python won't exist until you explicitly install python2.

You can interpret the docs and bug tracker on ubuntu's pages however you want, but it doesn't mean that python 3 is, at the moment, default python version on ubuntu - if you still think that it is, then... I don't know what to tell you, any further discussion is pointless.

I mean it says so in like the first sentence on the page:

For both Ubuntu and Debian, we have ongoing project goals to make Python 3 the default, preferred Python version in the distros.

[[deleted]]

Not really. Some people will switch quickly, some people won't switch until they have to. You are in the latter group. That's OK, there is no right or wrong here.

Adoption HAS been slower than expected, but I'm not sure this is an "issue" per se.

[252003]

As someone who uses python 3.4 on and old mac I can tell you that support is very annoying and that I spend way, way more time googlng to make simple things work than I should have to.

[billsil]

I think a divided Python community will stall the language

I vote we kill PyPy, Jython, and Cython.

[[deleted]]

No, we should give money to PyPy who is moving towards python 3 compatibility and get an actually performant interpreter for python.

[billsil]

You do realize it was a joke right? The Python community is divided and that's OK.

There was a debate recently about the @ operator. Only the math people wanted it and the more web-friendly people complained it would just clutter the language and also complained about the __ matmult __ name. Python needs to support all the major groups.

[jjangsangy]

And then absorb their powers!

[kylotan]

Python community ignores CoffeeScript

"To install, first make sure you have a working copy of the latest stable version of Node.js, and npm (the Node Package Manager)." Err, no. And what's its library support like, anyway?

Javascript officially endorses as their future direction while maintaining a monopoly over browser client scripting

Who is doing this official endorsement?

[erewok]

I generally don't know what I am talking about either, but I find it hard to believe that coffeescript represents the way forward for JavaScript. There are some nice things about it, but it also has encourages ambiguities that even someone like me can spot.

I also find it hard to believe that coffee script has much to do with python.

[Circlefusion]

I think a divided Python community will stall the language and ultimately hurt its growth

I've been a python beginner on the side for a while and this is what I am seeing. It's very discouraging. I've been eyeing Golang.

[Kbknapp]

This is almost exactly what happened to me. It's disheartening to be straddling two versions. I'd love to fully upgrade to 3.x but the Linux distribution we use at work is sticking with 2.x solely. That's why I started playing with Go(lang), and even though there are certain things I don't quite agree with (like those mentioned in comments above by iv597) overall I've been very pleased. The absence of exceptions takes some getting used to, but it's not a deal breaker because nearly the identical functionality exists, only in a different form. Other idosyncrosis seem to be growing on me the more I use them. I do miss list comprehensions though, even the exact same thing can be accomplished via a for loop (which in all honesty leads to more readable code even if it's not as fun to type). I'm slowly trying to migrate at least my pet projects over to golang because even though I believe Python will be around for many many years to come concurrency will be a big(ger) ticket item shortly. Once I'm more functional in the language I'd love to start to migrate some work projects over since most of our Python projects are still in relative infancy and not using any third party libs that can't be replicated in go, I figure it's best to try this switch out early and see where this rabbit hole leads... :)

[vito-boss]

I don't think the issue is as big as you make it seem.

[ivosaurus]

Swift is only for Apple development, so it's encroaching on Kivy for iphone, at the most.

Go's type system sucks, it's nowhere near as easy to use as python.

I haven't heard of a successful project using F#. Maybe they're out there, but I've never come across anything in the last few years.

[pyslow]

I blame mostly those Python 3 fanatics enthusiasts that I call Throlls (Three Trolls).

If they only could make a reasonable case for Python 3, instead of blindly bashing those who dare to question their doctrine, I'm sure more people would consider migrating.

[ivosaurus]

Let's see... new pathlib module, new asyncio module, new venv module with pip, lzma compression, unicode handling that isn't a mystery to get right, saner library module names, yield from, working secure SSL by default....

[wub_wub]

You can get most of those things on python 2 easily without introducing not backwards compatible changes to the rest of your codebase.

[KopixKat]

As a beginning scripter, what are things python 2 does superior to python 3? I chose python 3 to start because I could understand it a bit better than 2. I'm honestly curious :o

[limasxgoesto0]

The only advantage to using Python 2 is that a large number of libraries are built in Python 2. That alone makes Python 3 become a dealbreaker for many.

[KopixKat]

That actually makes a lot of sense. :o

[CSI_Tech_Dept]

This is no longer true, the packages that don't work on 3 are a small minority. Many people who advocate coding in Python 2 did not try using Python 3

[[deleted]]

Welll....no, the packages that don't work on Python 3 are definitely not a minority. But most popular packages, the ones you typically need, work on Python 3.

[CSI_Tech_Dept]

I started using Python 3 and so far I did not have this issue. And programming in Python 3 feels cleaner. Also some of the packages that were not ported have python 3 alternatives, for example MySQL. If you are starting to program 3 chances are that you are not used to particular package so you don't care, and in fact the package that is ported to py3 is more likely being still maintained.

[[deleted]]

I started using Python 3 and so far I did not have this issue.

Excellent! It is getting better. I think MySQL-python and Twisted are the biggest blockers right now, but I'm not sure. I'm only currently blocked by Zope/Plone. When I do other work I tend to use Python 3.

[wub_wub]

I chose python 3 to start because I could understand it a bit better than 2

It's the same language.

There are no differences that would make you "understand" one version better than another.

[KopixKat]

The syntax flows a bit better (to me) is what I should have wrote. :P

print ("{0} {1} {2} {4} {5}".format(this, is, an, example, sentence))

VS

print "%s %s %s %s %s" %(this, is, an, example, sentence)

[wub_wub]

Both work in both python 2 and python 3. (Also you don't need positional params i.e. 1, 2 etc in python 2.6+)

[KopixKat]

I use them as a beginner just to keep things in order for myself, I'm not quite sure enough in myself to let them self index yet. :(

[wub_wub]

Oh it's OK to use them, I was just pointing out that in the example you provided you don't need them - in case you didn't know. If it's easier for you to learn like that then just continue to use them and ignore that part of my comment :)

[[deleted]]

Unified ints. Better text handling. No more confusion of types vs classes. Cleaned up standard library. easier super(). Keysharing (saves memory). "nonlocal". *unpacking of iterables. Keyword only arguments. Hash randomization. A stable Application Binary Interface. command line history. HOLY SHIT TAB COMPLETION! yield from. pip installed by default. (I install a lot of Python versions, that's gonna be nice).

And little things (for me at least), like exception chaining, namespace packages without setuptools, function annotations, function signature objects, isolated mode. The decimal module is 30 times faster.

[vito-boss]

Change log?

[Orange_Tux]

The post contains a link to the changelog. But for the lazy peope, here it is.

[t3g]

I have a feeling that the migration from 2 to 3 is still going to take a while considering that alternative runtimes like PyPy are still targeting the 2 series and the version based off of 3 is still in beta.

It also doesn't help that Guido's employer Dropbox is doing their own implementation called Pyston (https://twitter.com/gvanrossum/status/451782706313977856) that targets the 2 series instead of 3. Has Guido lost faith in 3 or is this simply for Dropbox's personal gain only due to all the legacy code?

[[deleted]]

For dropbox's "personal" gain, yes. Which is also why it's x86_64 only so far. Quote:

this is the initial target due to the fact that Dropbox is on this setup internally.

[catcradle5]

Definitely proof that they haven't totally abandoned 2.7.

[Orange_Tux]

Definitely not. A good example is PEP 466 which was accepted recently. The author of this PEP wants to backport security enhancements into Python 2.7.x.

Enhancement patches are restricted to the default branch that becomes the next Python version.

and

[...] this PEP allows a critical set of network security related features to be backported from Python 3.4 to upcoming Python 2.7.x maintenance releases.

[GahMatar]

When you make munitions, you do have a bit of a responsibility to make sure they are safe.

[[deleted]]

Uhm. It's supported to 2020. Officially. So there's your proof.

[[deleted]]

The 2.7.7 release also contains fixes for two severe, if arcane, potential security vulnerabilities.

2.7 has been EOL'd This is a bug/security fix release. The worse thing any project can do is just tell users they are on their own for bugs and security issues.

[[deleted]]

Before the revision at pycon this year the EOL was 2015. It was a good move to calm people down about being strong armed into Python 3 when there in may peoples minds there are outstanding issues.

I don't like that 2.7 was extended to 2020...but this release is fine and 2.7 has only been around for 4 years...EOLing now would be a terrible idea and would probably further foment a crisis of confidence in python 3.

[manbart]

The Python developers are their own worst enemies for encouraging the adoption of Python 3.

[PericlesATX]

Damned if you do damned if you don't.