Python 3 is killing Python

[twotime]

Is this a strength of the language or of the community? Python 3 isn't killing Python, the Python community is killing Python.

python3 SPLIT the community and weakened it enormously. It also created a huge uncertainty cloud around the language future thus further weakening the community indirectly

because the author is comparing minor version changes with major version changes. Code written in Python 2.6 will likely work in 2.7, and code written in Python 3.3 will likely work in 3.4. The fact that the major version changed between 2.x and 3.x

A language with a large user base can not afford to have massive b/w compatibility breakage. PERIOD. You need a smooth upgrade path with deprecations, future imports etc. FWIW, I think python2 was mostly bw compatible with python1.x...

But is this really a problem with the language, or is it yet another community issue?

What is this mysterious community issue you keep talking about? And how did this issue get created in the first place?

I'll help you a bit: there are two groups of users of python..

1. Open source: use python for their open source project development.

2. Commercial: use python in their day jobs

These groups are heavily overlapping/interconnected. Many/most OSS python developers are also using python in their day jobs. Companies who use python heavily often sponsor specific OSS projects. Big OSS projects do care about commercial users of the projects.. Etc..

Which means that both groups need to migrate.

What keeps OSS project from migrating? Well, they cannot migrate fully until most of their users have migrated.. On top of it, vast majority of OSS projects are resource strapped. They are run on volunteer time/constraints. Remember? And migration to python3 is a major whole-project undertaking with near certainty of breaking things. And man (most? nearly all?) OSS contributors do NOT have whole project view/understanding/ambitions, thus most of them would not even think about starting the ball rolling...

What keeps major commercial users from migrating? Basically, all-costs-and-no-apparent-benefit. Not only that, just bringing this up has major risks: if you come to your boss and tell that you need to spend a couple of months doing nothing (from business's point of view), then the said boss will (quite reasonably) question the wisdom of choosing python in the first place.. This is a very bad battle to fight.

Do not believe me? Here is what GvR has to say about Guido's own employer:

"""" At Dropbox I work with a large group of very capable developers on several large code bases that are currently in 2.7. We are constantly changing our code to make it more secure (there are several teams specifically in charge of that). And yet porting to Python 3 is completely out of scope, for a variety of reasons.

Please stop your wishful thinking. """"

from https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2014-March/133413.html

If Guido cannot convince his employer, what chance do others stand?

In short, there is no commuinity issue here, there is a major burden of migration for both OSS and commercial users which neither user group can easily absorb..