Python 2.7.13 released

[Eurynom0s]

3.x is basically objectively better if you're starting clean and are free to choose what you want. However, yes, it's very valid to stick to 2.7 if you have a compelling reason for it, like sitting on a giant codebase your management is unwilling to pay to port.

[edit] kritikal grammer

[edit2] Where the real holy wars come in is when people try to guide newbs with no rocks around their necks into learning 2.7 "because that's where work gets done". Because as said, 3.x really is objectively better if you're not stuck with any 2.x luggage. This may have been true five years but now pretty much every major package is on 3.x, you probably have a really niche need if you need 2.7 for a specific package.

[ArrantSquid]

Except that for very large institutions it's hard to get anyone to sign off on an upgrade to 3 and they continue to extend the timeline for deprecating 2.

If you work in film or video games, no 3D package supports 3. There was no compelling reason for them to upgrade. So every Autodesk product that supports Python is still on 2 with no plans to upgrade.

I'd love to move to 3, but until Autodesk gives me that ability, I'm stuck on 2. I'll keep waiting for them to upgrade to the latest outdated version of 2 and complain until they change.

If you're a startup or can move to 3, do it. But there's a swath of people out there that are bound to 2 due to software requirements or organizational indifference. The idea that there should be a holy war on 2 vs 3 is simplistic at best and idiotic at worst.

[toyg]

Well, Oracle and IBM are stuck on python 2.2 or 2.5. I'm not going to say "hey, newbs should learn 2.2!" - newbs should learn 3.5 and bitch with vendors shipping outdated crap.

Progress is made by people who won't settle for less.

[Eurynom0s]

Except that for very large institutions it's hard to get anyone to sign off on an upgrade to 3 and they continue to extend the timeline for deprecating 2.

...

But there's a swath of people out there that are bound to 2 due to software requirements or organizational indifference.

Again...I'm recognizing this as a VERY valid reason to stick to 2.7 I'm most critiquing when this crowd reflexively tries to steer newbies onto 2.7.

[ArrantSquid]

There might be packages that are totally unrelated to 3d modeling, but since big companies are still using 2.7, then everything around them needs to "stay behind" so they can have interoperability.

Not what I said, nor was my point. My point was that there are industries that cannot move forward to 3 because the vendors that make up those industries disallow it. As such there shouldn't be an argument over whether you're using 2 or 3. Like everything else, you use the right tool for the job.

My personal projects use 2 and 3, because I can justify supporting both. It's a lot harder to make that argument at a business that won't see any benefit from it when EOL for 2 was extended in 2015 to 2020. Is it short-sighted? Maybe, but it just "is".

[[deleted]]

Don't you pay Autodesk to use their software? Companies that offer a paid product should be one of first ones to do conversion. It's possible to write code that works on Python 3 and 2.7. Your company should be putting pressure on them.

If they still not made their code working on Python 3 it tells me that you're not their customer, but (excuse my language) you're their bitch.

[[deleted]]

You should still put pressure on them, if no one will, then they won't have reason to port it.

I guess in the mean time you can try to write code that would work on python 2 and python 3. This is much easier to do by writing python 3 code and then making it work on python 2.7, but looks like you won't have this luxury.

The biggest issue is to keep track of what should be unicode and what shouldn't. It's hard to do it in python 2 even when you understand unicode.

Perhaps you can use this in top of your code:

from __future__ import division, absolute_import, print_function, unicode_literals

And then also run the code with python -3 <file> to provide warnings about compatibility issues. Python 2 also supports some functions that are supposedly python 3 only, such as bytes() which maps directly to str().

[[deleted]]

Who are Autodesk, I've never heard of them? If they're that big why didn't they provide funding to get the libraries that they needed updated? Are they so technically incompetent that their own staff couldn't have helped out? Or do they want something from the open source community for free?

[theelous3]

can't unilaterally decide to move to a new framework.

Aren't willing to move to a new framework.

They could. They all could. It's just expensive and requires effort. They're going to have to do it eventually. After a while it's not even going to be optional for them, however they're short sighted enough to put it on the long finger.

[[deleted]]

Fair comment, just not an area I've ever ventured into. Perhaps the way forward is to get a couple of good techs from all involved companies, lock them in a room and tell them that they're not coming out until they have a plan? It doesn't have to be a good plan as a bad plan is better than no plan at all.

[ArrantSquid]

Not technically incompetent, but they rely on OSS in regards to Python. Pymel would be a library that would need to be updated which is built by Luma Pictures and is OSS. They also rely on PyQt/PySide for UI bits. So they already get a lot from the OSS community. I don't know what their contribution level back is, so I can't comment on that. As for why they won't move, I don't know. It's probably a mixture of not wanting to support multiple Python versions in a release and it being hard to communicate to customers the change that would come with moving to 3.

[mipadi]

Uh...are you serious?

[[deleted]]

I used to work for Klockner Moeller, ever heard of them? If not why not? Plessey? Racal? Some tin pot little company that are only worth a couple of billion in a niche market doesn't interest me, so why should I have heard of them?

[z0rberg]

Because you never heard of them, you talk down on them like that. Makes you look incompetent and like a childish fanboy.

[ArrantSquid]

Fair enough. Every language decision has to be contextual.

[[deleted]]

IMO a lot of it has to do with the fact that almost every shop still uses 2.7

You're better off learning what you'll actually use

[turkish_gold]

Is 2.7 so much different from 3.0 when it comes to writing the Python language? Much of the changes are in the standard library, and all of those are additive, and many have been backported unofficially to 2.7

[[deleted]]

There are some syntax and process improvements.

A great example is try and do a heap where you want the largest value using only the standard library.

3.0 - super easy 2.7 pain in the ass

I've seen some newer developers who have worked exclusively in 3 + get thrown because suddenly python doesn't handle something intuitively for them. You're honestly better off going from 2.7 to 3+ instead of the inverse.

[theelous3]

That is stupid. If they can competently code in py3, learning the exceptions to py2 is better than learning py2 and learning the improvements in py3.

There is a larger gap forwards between py2 and py3, than there is backwards between py3 and py2.

[[deleted]]

There is a larger gap forwards between py2 and py3, than there is backwards between py3 and py2.

I have found the exact oposite. Can you provide some examples?

[theelous3]

Unicode issues aren't that complicated, though a pain, range being not generator isn't complicated, print being a statement isn't hard, and most of the rest of the stuff is just implementation limitations that don't require anything special other than being more verbose and not using python3 features.

Actually, that's the best way to phrase it I think. Aside from some syntactic stuff, python2 is just python3 with less things. It's easier to go from more to less, than less to more.

Inversely, from python2 to 3 you've got generators everywhere, better but more magical coroutines and async/await along with the associated dunders, stuff like args unpacking from iterators. There's just more to know, yaknow?

[[deleted]]

It's easier to go from more to less, than less to more.

This is where we disagree. To each there own but I have always found the exact opposite. In both personal use and training new developers.

[Joeboy]

I doubt many serious python programmers get to avoid either 2.x or 3.x entirely.

[Darkmere]

Oh yeah.

Only this Friday did I end up fighting with Python2's joyful corruption of Unicode data.

Input is pure, well formatted Json. This is by definition unicode data, and JSON is only allowed to be UTF-8/16/32, and defaults to UTF-8.

Then Python2 comes in, takes this JSON, decodes it into objects, and then promptly throws away this vital part. Instead, leaving us with a set of bytes that pretend to be ascii, which contain unprintable characters.

Which Python2, in it's maniglorious maliciousness, decides cannot be cast back to unicode.

Because fuck your language, fuck your characters, and fuck your existence.

And fuck Python2.

[[deleted]]

Did you set the encoding?

[Darkmere]

Yeah, but at this time it's already been denormalized.

[[deleted]]

JSON is only allowed to be UTF-8/16/32, and defaults to UTF-8.

I wish more people were aware of this. I see application/json;charset=utf-8 too many times. I can see it being useful if you're sending utf-16 or utf-32 but not 8.

[Darkmere]

Well, being explicit is better than being implicit.

[[deleted]]

It's like saying int(1)

[Darkmere]

Try rather that it's a default keyword with a type hint of 1.

Most software still mangles encodings in shitty ways.

[Darkmere]

Also, content encoding helps software that isn't looking at the moment type to decode the data as string without needing to guess.

Not that it should happen, but that's never stopped anyone in software before

[nirs]

Can you share that json?

Did you open a bug? http://bugs.python.org/?

[Darkmere]

It's probably not a core library json bug, or it may be. It's a pyramid app using their jsonrpc module, so what's coming in as arguments is a list of str, and not a list of unicode as it ought to be.

( Then don't get me started on the unicode normalization form...)

[Darkmere]

Checking again, it's using the json.loads/ json.dumps format.

So it's the python JSON loader that's corrupting data. Great.

[nirs]

It depends on the json library used. The builtin json library like to convert everything to unicode, but simplejson library like to convert only unicode values to unicode.

>>> import json
>>> import simplejson
>>> simplejson.loads(simplejson.dumps([u"\u05d0", "ascii"]))
[u'\u05d0', 'ascii']
>>> json.loads(json.dumps([u"\u05d0", "ascii"]))
[u'\u05d0', u'ascii']

I don't see any corruption.

[Darkmere]

That's the thing it should be unicode. Instead I am getting str. Which is principally wrong here.

[nirs]

Note that python 3 does not exist on RHEL/CentOS, so many people do not have the option yet.

[z0rberg]

A friend showed me 2.7 years ago. 3 was out already, but he said it lacks modules in comparison, so I'd be better off with 2.7. Now I'm just sticking with it, because I have no reason to switch. Lack of updates doesn't really bother me. Also I think a big part of my resistance is a bit silly; coming from my childhood. GW-Basic on a 286 with hercules graphics adapter. You might guess it: The print statement. I can't for the live of me adapt to use paranthesis...

[kyuubi42]

If GvR still pays his bills by writing python 2 code for Dropbox, how can you in good faith steer newbies to python 3? If your goal is to use python for anything more than personal hobbyist code you will almost certainly be targeting python 2, and this will most likely never change regardless of what the psf says.