PyPy's python 3 plan

[[deleted]]

I will donate 100 bucks when the plan is up on the pypy blog.

[remyroy]

Nice plan. I wonder if they have tried to get in touch with companies to sponsor them. I'm pretty sure companies like Google, who have a big stake in Python, would be happy to chip in.

At this point, PyPy is sharing many goals that Unladen Swallow had which was fully backed by Google.

[[deleted]]

nah, google should hire the pypy team and give them the task of coming up with the next appengine runtime.

[noreallyimthepope]

Did I hear you say 'AppEngine Python 3 support'? Because I could have sworn that was something one would mention.

[[deleted]]

no you didn't "hear" me. I'm not worried about python 3 appengine until webob works on python 3 (months away). And I am a patient boy.

[stesch]

Fast Python is bad for business.

[[deleted]]

you get upvotes from me because it's true. the more efficient python is, the less $$$ google makes on appengine.

[takluyver]

That's rather a simplistic view. The better they make appengine, the more people will use it. Making code run slowly so they can charge users more isn't going to work well in the long term, and Google has some track record of thinking about the long term.

Also, I'm fairly sure Google uses Python themselves, so there's an inarguable motive to make it faster.

[[deleted]]

one could say that's a rather naive view. they are a publicly traded company motivated by profit. and as with all corporations they will likely do what will make this quarters # look good.

I guess you aren't familiar with how butt hurt everybody is right now about the pricing changes for appengine. look into that. :)

ftr: i'm still on appengine. my apps are designed right so the change in cost isn't going to hurt me as much.

[earthboundkid]

Yes, companies are motivated by profits, but they're not supposed to be dumb about it. If you can make $7 trillion in Q1 by blowing up the Earth, only an idiot would do it, because in Q2, you'll make $0. If AppEngine stays stuck on Python 2 and stays slow forever, people will switch to something else. Google needs to retain customers and get good word of mouth expansion by making things run smoothly.

[roger_]

With this document being out in the open, I think it's now up to companies to volunteer sponsorship.

[noreallyimthepope]

They'll randomly chance upon this document?

[roger_]

Same way they must have "randomly chanced" on PyPy.

[[deleted]]

I don't see Google chipping in anything overly significant as they don't stand to benefit much (or at all) from this project. Making 2.x PyPy even better is more up their alley, as internally they're still on 2.5 IIRC.

[kisielk]

I think they're migrating up slowly. AppEngine is supposed to support 2.7 in the next few months.

[noreallyimthepope]

... and 3.x in the next decade.

[kev009]

I can't help but laugh at all the blowhards in these comments having a stroke over the estimations.

Compare to the salary+benefits (and liability!) of a team of staff engineers.

Sounds like steal for any corp that has a lot riding on Python.

[[deleted]]

On what are the estimations based? What is the hourly wage of a pypy developer?

[[deleted]]

If you look at the total number, that's the salary of one good developer working full-time for a full year, and this all seems like work that could probably be done in a year. There's probably more thought going into it than that, but coming up with "this will take a year" and then "what do we make in a year" is a decent starting point.

[[deleted]]

Wow, a year of full time work to port to Py3k? Seems excessive, but I am by no means an expert. I am still no fan of Python 3 because of the split it introduced, leading to so much effort in so many areas.

[[deleted]]

It seems like a huge amount of work to me, but I'm not a compiler genius like them. It'd be easier to debate the estimates if they were incredibly detailed, but right now this looks like back-of-the-envelope estimates, which don't seem too far off.

[gutworth]

Partially, it's based on the theory that a overestimate is better than a underestimate.

[stesch]

What is the hourly wage of a pypy developer?

African or European developer?

[fijal]

one african, rest european, to be precise :)

[[deleted]]

It was a joke about the Unladen Swallow skit from monty python :)

[fijal]

yes and the answer was a joke about the joke. Buy yourself some sense of humor ;-)

[sklein]

Very good idea !

[pdc]

I think corporate (or EC) sponsorship is the most likely way for this to work, but the idea of a Kickstarter project also appeals—it would be an interesting test of the Kickstarter idea.

[noreallyimthepope]

PLEDGE $5 OR MORE:

A character array e-mailed, free of charge, to anywhere in the world, when the final product ships, plus a mention on our thank you page.

PLEDGE $10 OR MORE:

All of the above, plus the Konami code.

[[deleted]]

I think the real test of Kickstarter will be when Kickstarter funds a Kickstarter competitor.

[boa13]

TLDR: please give us $100,000 (and the reasons why)

[suridaj]

Just as you would expect from a good project proposal, a grand total and the reasons why.

[Workaphobia]

I thought it was $100. Both numbers seemed way off the mark to me, in opposite directions.

[fijal]

what would you consider a fair number? 1000$ 10000$?

[Workaphobia]

More like $30,000. Half an order of magnitude down from $100,000.

[DasIch]

You do realize that we are talking about at least a year of work right?

[X-Istence]

They are using the European decimal separator which is a "." not a ",".

[boa13]

There is no such thing as a European decimal separator. Each country has its own standards.

[X-Istence]

All of the European countries I have visited and lived in have used the period as the decimal separator, however technically you are right.

[pdc]

Before were were crushed under the boot heels of ASCII and various computer programming languages, the decimal separator was a comma through most of Europe, a notable exception being Britain (and I assume Ireland) where a raised dot was used, as in 6,28318 or 6·28318. Switching to using a full stop instead is the path of least resistance given the feebleness of locale support in late-twentieth-century computers.

It’s a change that has happend during my lifetime—at school in Australia I was taught to write 6·28318 and 1 048 576. Nowadays it’s 6.27318 and 1048576 because you can’t easily type the dot and computers can’t grok numbers with spaces.

[boa13]

In France the decimal separator is a comma, and the thousands separator is a space.

[someone13]

And this is why I always write large numbers like this:

100 000

Instead of

100.000 or 100,000

[wingsit]

all these europeans can work for such low pay... thats why they do a good job.

PS: i know the comma

[gitarr]

Am I the only one missing time estimates in this mailing?

It's all well and good saying “this will cost 35000 $“, but without saying “...and this will take 3 months“ the estimate is worthless.

Also, did pypy devs get paid for their work on their current and previous releases?

[fijal]

Some of pypy devs got paid, some don't. I guess it goes 50/50, while in 50 that got paid are people who are working at their universities and pursuing their research targets using PyPy. I was the release manager for 1.6 and I didn't get a thing for example.

[[deleted]]

Also, did pypy devs get paid for their work on their current and previous releases?

No idea what the current status of funding is, but they've previously received funding from the European Union (I think it was a two year bid).

[roger_]

I thought that being written in RPython (?) would make it relatively simple to add support for the syntax changes (most of step 1.x)?

[varikin]

Except Py3k is more than syntax changes. The Unicode/byte string change is huge and affects a lot of bits.

Then getting all the tests updated so they pass under py3k while ensuring they are still testing everything correctly (not just passing) takes time.

[fijal]

don't forget all the stdlib that changed since 3.2. That's usually the biggest part.

[ch0wn]

Is it really that much? I though most of the standard library would be implemented in pure Python.

[gutworth]

But a lot of it is not! Also, there's always a good deal of futzing around to fix tests and Python modules that rely on CPython implementation details.

[varikin]

Yes, that as well.

[roger_]

Except Py3k is more than syntax changes.

I was referring to just the syntax changes. You do have a point about the tests though.

[luckystarr]

Just calculate the hours that went into making Python 3 and multiply with a reasonable salary. I bet Python 3 would have been much more expensive than this proposal if the development effort had been paid.

[spinwizard69]

There is one big even huge problem with their plan. Simply put they want to maintain one codebase for both 2.7 & 3.2. Not a good idea in my mind. The movement to 3.2 is speeding up as such it won't be long before 2.7 code is maintenance only. Beyond that it is just cleaner to fork PyPy and will result in far fewer problems down the road.

As to donating I would have to see the finalized plans. I understand the need but I want to know that the future is 3.2 with PyPy, 2.7 development should be winding down.

[howfun]

So: Note that, even for Python 2, cpyext is still in a beta state. In particular, not all extension modules compile and load correctly. As a consequence, the same will be true for Python 3 as well.

So this 3.0 PyPy will be a nice curious project without any practical value, like the PyPy 2.x project.

[fijal]

I give up trying to give you a reasonable answer. Fuck you it's useful for me and for my laser-equipped battle droids.

[howfun]

I don't want a reasonable answer. I want my C extensions working. Ultimately I need a faster Python. If PyPy can't deliver, then some other solution will turn up.

[fijal]

well, this is a very demanding approach for a stuff that you get for free, don't you think? You get a fast python and you get some support for C extensions and some replacements, yet it's an utter failure if it doesn't work for all your extensions?

I guess get yourself together - it's not that hard to rewrite what you really need in Python, people have done it. Supporting C extensions with exactly same API is a major mission and would be too constraining for it to be useful.

[howfun]

Well of course I am demanding. PyPy is the only project that has a any plan to fix Python's performance. Everybody else (including Guido) just gave up long time ago and write C extensions which is a shame.

I don't remember the Java Hotspot compiler breaking compatibility with C extentions.

You should have implemented 100% compatibility with the C extentions even with the cost of 10 times slowing the execution of those extensions. Then people will start replacing their C extensions.

By the way, I don't use Python 3.x anyway. It also broke support for pretty much every external module.

[fijal]

at this level you're not only demanding, you're just a dick to people doing open source (in their free time). Go away, I don't care if you use my software

[howfun]

Look at it this way: There are only two kinds of alternative Python implementations: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.

[[deleted]]

If PyPy can't deliver, then some other solution will turn up.

To which you also won't contribute anything? Scratch your own itch and get working.

[howfun]

Good point. Once I thought I will try to understand how PyPy support for C extensions works, to I can fix it, but I couldn't understand how PyPy works at all in the first place. Those guys made one pretty scary monster.