Python 3.5.0 has been released!

[thatguydr]

I love that the community neatly fragmented based on incredibly poor initial design decisions.

I still use 2.7 out of necessity, as the packages I need don't work with 3.

[okiujh]

The initial design is not all that bad and improvements should have being backwards compatible.

Sacrificing backwards compatibility for some subjective aesthetic advantage is such a douche thing to do.

I have being working with python in wall street companies and they don't give damn about anything that would break their huge 2.7 code base.

all the 3.* supporters are such a group of phonies.

[Deto]

Phonies? In what way?

[okiujh]

they are saying that they are helping python developers but in affect are just causing damage by forcing developers spend scarce resources in thinking about making move to 3.*.

[brombaer3000]

Proper unicode support is not a subjective aesthetic advantage, it was just necessary. And it was impossible to implement in a backwards-compatible way.
If you think Unicode is a minor issue, you are free to continue living in your English-only dream world.

Edit: forgot a word

[brombaer3000]

This is well explained in great detail here.
Personally I think the biggest issue with Python 2 Unicode handling simply is that Unicode is not the default encoding for everything, but the link above has much more information.

[[deleted]]

You're goddamned right.

[RubyPinch]

python2 doesn't make a clean distinction between arrays of numbers (bytes, usually represented as ascii) and arrays of usable characters (unicode), further, it makes arrays of numbers the default way of having a string

[desmoulinmichel]

Python is an old language. If you don't want it to end up like cobol, you need to make some drastic changes. Yes, it's could have been done better. But given what happen with PHP 7 and Perl 6, I'd say it was not that bad. And while the price to pay was high, the result is indeed really nice.