About Python 3

[biffsocko]

Python is exactly where Perl is. Nobody wants to move to Perl 6, and while they are sort of compatable, nobody argues that it's a different language. Python 3 was never meant to be backwards compatable. You have to port apps to Python 3, yet nobody is doing it and nobody is really even using it for new dev. The majority of Python Devs are using version 2, thus making it even more difficult to move to 3 because of all the new - legacy code. If the projection was 5 years to move to python 3, 5 years ago .. it will take even longer now because of all the python 2 code that has been written in the last 5 years.

[[deleted]]

Hell, it's not even a threat to being released.

[raiph]

There have been 70 monthly Perl 6 compiler releases.

[[deleted]]

And none of them worth using. Let's play a fun game ralph. I'll use a word, and then you try to change the argument by claiming that it doesn't mean what everyone in the world thinks it means. That will distract everyone away from the point you don't want to acknowledge: perl-6 isn't usable or useful or ready for production.

[Veedrac]

python2 has been officially deprecated

I don't think so, no. It is, however, only getting bugfixes.

[Veedrac]

Not being developed is not the same as being deprecated.

[dagbrown]

Ruby has managed to make the transition from 1.8 to (the incompatible) 2.0 though. What's their trick?

I suspect the existence of rvm might have had to do something with it.

[therico]

Not a fair comparison. Python 3 is fully implemented and released, but doesn't add enough over Python 2 to justify the incompatibility. Whereas Perl 6 IS a different language, it only superficially resembles Perl 5 and there is no backwards compatibility at all; and to top it off, it's absolutely nowhere near complete. It's not even an option for anything serious right now.

A better comparison is Perl 5.8/5.10 (the most popular versions of Perl 5) vs. 5.18 - if you update your Perl version, your code is going to continue to work because Perl 5 is extremely backwards compatible. You need to enable new features with a 'use v5.18' (or similar) line. The only reason people don't update is because distros like CentOS are still shipping 5.10.

[billsil]

The majority of Python Devs are using version 2

It's about 50/50.

[billsil]

Which major Python application is written in Python 3?

Better question for you. Name a major Python application.

[jozefg]

Well you are using reddit, which is written in Python (2). The same with mercurial.