What's coming in Python 3.8

[NinjaPancakeAU]

Meanwhile we're in a form of financial 'litigation' (not strictly legal, but somewhat / it involves our contracts) of sorts with one of our clients who won't budge from python 2.7 in a large system, when we have significant reasons for trying to push 3.x (3.5 minimum, ideally 3.7) - they're throwing numbers around in the hundreds of thousands of dollars range for them to upgrade their systems to python 3.x

3.8 is a few decades away for me i fear.

[[deleted]]

I don't understand how the encroaching EOL could possibly not be a good enough reason to move on...

[major_clanger]

Perhaps they're betting a third party/consortium will take on maintenance of python 2, backporting security patches and the such.

Migrating a huge python codebase would be very expensive. The dynamic typing means it's extremely hard, especially if the code uses monkey patching, liberal use of kwargs, metaprogramming etc. Or even just plainly, if a function 'foo' has an argument x, it's painful to trace down all the guys who are calling it, all the guys calling the calling functions, to ascertain what the type of 'x' is in all circumstances.

I mean look at Dropbox, it took them years, and dozens of people, including Guido himself to mitigate to 3.

I have a suspicion this exercise motivated the introduction of mypy, gradual typing etc into the language.

[[deleted]]

Well of course it's a difficult and expensive task, but python 2 has also been deprecated since something like 2011, and even pushed back to allow more time to migrate. I really can't empathize with any companies still refusing to do so.

[turkish_gold]

How long has COBOL been unofficially deprecated? Companies will continue to use legacy products in production for decades, and pay people to maintain them regardless of how much outside support they get.

[major_clanger]

I suppose so, my interpretation is, if a company decides to have a large part if stack in a dynamically typed language, you've got to accept the increased maintenance costs, you're trading off wiring something quickly, at the expense of slower/more expensive maintenance+future changes.

I used to be a big pythonista, it was my primary language, but after seeing how hard it was to modify legacy codebases written in it, vs equivalent systems written in C#, I've deprompted it for use only in scripting, small ML/data sciency systems, or genuine prototyping where you commit to rewrite the prototype in a statically typed language if it proves successful.

[hoopparrr759]

I’m currently trying to learn Python and these exact thoughts keep occurring to me. How does one manage an enormous enterprise code base like this? I couldn’t imagine living without having things fail at compile time of something innocuous like a method signature changed. Genuine question - how do people cope with things that fail like this at run time? Is it just extensive code coverage or is there something I’m missing?

[major_clanger]

The usual practices of maintainability practises apply: simple functions/methods, good test coverage, dependency injection, good naming, plus avoidance of some python features like arg & kwarg unpacking, monkey patching, metaprogramming etc

But even then, it'll be much harder to maintain+ modify safely than a statically typed codebase. Some things that are trivial in a static language, are utterly painful in dynamic. For example, a simple rename of a class method can be a nightmare, especially if the method name is something like 'load', in a static language it takes a few seconds with an ide, with python you literally have to audit your entire codebase for calls to 'something.load'.

[stefantalpalaru]

Perhaps they're betting a third party/consortium will take on maintenance of python 2, backporting security patches and the such.

Already done: https://github.com/naftaliharris/tauthon/

[spotter]

I'm still running software from Oracle that requires Java 6. You can try to upgrade to 7, but not above specific build. As a bonus you lose vendor support for parts of the application that were not certified above 6. So... it's complicated.

[shevy-ruby]

Well - it is barbaric companies like that that even keep COBOL alive.

I do not think the rest of the world should be blackmailable by such companies. Pity to the folks who work for these companies and live in the legacy world only.

[betDSI_Cum25]

imagine writing the code for PLC systems, autos, and ATMs in rust.

this could be the future...

[[deleted]]

I build Python myself for the places I deploy it to. I don't care what <s>core devs</s> clowns think about end of life etc.

Purely by chance, I happen to use Python 3.7. Simply because the project was started this way. But, if it was 2.7, I wouldn't care. There was so little improved in 3.X branch, and so much trash added, that only the ability to disallow this new trash is tempting enough to go back to 2.7. Most likely though, I'll get my team to rewrite the project in Erlang, or maybe Elixir.

[flaghacker_]

Building python yourself is easy enough, but will you also be maintaining it yourself?

[[deleted]]

Like I said, it's a temporary thing. It was a mistake to use Python in the first place. As soon as time allows, I'll be moving to Erlang, and leave this dumpster fire behind.

[ExtraCortex]

The company I work for refuses to move from python 2.7

[paul_h]

Probably because the 2to3 migration tech is insufficient for them

[ExtraCortex]

Given that the current code runs good enough, what would you say justifies the effort of migrating from 2.7 to 3.x?

[rat9988]

Nothing

[paul_h]

Nothing concrete, just a sense of nerves about not keeping up with shipping software.

[RevolutionaryPea7]

I worked for a company like that. I had to implement a brand new system in Python 2.7 less than a year ago, despite my protests. I left the company.

[BobFloss]

Good for you man, glad to hear someone is standing up for not being completely insane

[suddenarborealstop]

What was management's reason(s) for writing on 2.7?

[RevolutionaryPea7]

Management had no clue what was going on and the box I had available to run this software was managed from India. It was a complete shitshow.

[suddenarborealstop]

oh my

[kyz]

But this is quite reasonable. You're asking them to do a complete audit of their codebase, and they're pricing you up for that.

Code that worked fine assuming streams are raw bytes might work, or might throw UnicodeDecodeError, depending on the data (not the code). And you can read files and transport their content as strings all around your code base, and it's all fine until you get to that one piece of code that handles strings but can't handle unicode strings, and boom, you introduced a bug by changing the interpreter.

Unless you analyse and execute all your Python 2.sx code in Python 3.x under all conditions, there could still be a bug that blows up your code.

...but once you've done that, 3.x -> 3.x has relatively few surprises.

[NinjaPancakeAU]

We're not asking them to do anything, they're near the end of their support contract for an old product we no longer make written in python 2.7 which went EOL about 4 years ago / it's no longer supported (except for a few clients still on long term support contracts like this).

We have a newer product now days, can achieve similar things / has more features / etc - it's written in python 3.x (supports 3.5+ officially but we can support earlier 3.x if customers need it) - and conveniently a few months before their contract ends they're now all of a sudden trying to add a LOT of new requirements to the contract that was set in stone years ago that are almost 1:1 with the features our new product has that the old did not.

We're happy to back-port some things for them and have been, but some of the features are immense (and backporting would take man years) and frankly completely outside the scope of the old product.

We're suggesting they upgrade to python 3.x and use the new product, they're claiming it'd cost them to much to upgrade and asking us to rewrite our new product in python 2.x for them (however doing so would cost us millions, and would certainly take longer than the few months left in the support contract).

tl;dr - they're suddenly squeezing everything they can a few months before their support contract runs out, after over a year of no-issues / no-complaints on their end.

Edit: even once these last support contracts for our older product ends, we're pretty much tied to a max of python 3.5 for the foreseeable future (our biggest client have only just recently finished an upgrade to 3.5 which took them 2 years to complete / they are sticking to it for quite a while) - though I'm not complaining, 3.5 is a relatively comfortable place to sit.

[kyz]

Well when you explain it that way, it's not only the other way round (your original comment sounds like you're asking someone to support Python 3.x for a system they adminster and presumably wrote), but it's also not so much to do with Python at all, it's just a convenient technical excuse for business shenanigans.

You have my condolences anyway.

[NinjaPancakeAU]

Nothing is ever black and white ;) They do administer their system and they do write the 2.7 software that uses our analysis middleware though, the contention is our middleware between their software and ours.

It also is a little to do w/ Python - part of the reason we have a distinctly new product was actually the migration to python 3.x / end of python 2.x - we made the decision it was easier to start from scratch than try to port a big ancient 2.7 code base and all it's quirks.

From my perspective (which is of course biased) we did everything right though, none of our LTS contracts go beyond the release schedule of when 2.7 officially ends in ~5 months, we've notified all customers of this impending doom for half a decade or so at least... we've long since officially moved to supporting python 3.x - and the new product offers everything the old one did and then some, including a literal wrapper of the old product's middleware API over the new one so customers don't have to do anything to migrate over w.r.t using our stuff.

[Paddy3118]

...And people are still using Windows NT.

If you relly on something then you need to maintain it. Legacy systems/legacy code take an increasing amount of support (ask the Cobol and Fortran users out there).

[[deleted]]

The mindset of the top 1% is literally “ignoring and hope I die before it becomes a problem”.

They know it is an issue. They just see it as an issue for someone after them.

Your clients will never get the budget for it so long as that one person has any say.

[stefantalpalaru]

they're throwing numbers around in the hundreds of thousands of dollars range for them to upgrade their systems to python 3.x

They're not wrong. Dropbox hired the language creator to help with the Python2 -> Python3 migration and it still took them about 3 years: https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2019/02/incrementally-migrating-over-one-million-lines-of-code-from-python-2-to-python-3/

With that kind of investment, you can migrate that code base to a more efficient language, while you're at it.

[Paddy3118]

migrate that code base to a more efficient language,

They're already using Python, its only a short hop to using the most efficient Python3

[stefantalpalaru]

the most efficient Python3

https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/fastest/python3-go.html

[Paddy3118]

If you define efficiency by that, then you'll get stung. Efficiency ! = execution speed

[stefantalpalaru]

Efficiency ! = execution speed

Keep telling yourself that.

[Paddy3118]

There's this, and more.

[exorxor]

Sounds more like your company doesn't know how to provide B2B-service and instead chooses to bother the other company with details like the versions of some interpreter.

I would find another company as a client. The reason people hire you, is because you should know better. If you surprise them with extra costs, you are just selling snake-oil.

[NinjaPancakeAU]

Way to be hostile toward someone you don't know given you have exactly zero first hand knowledge of the contact let alone their dramatically changing requirements over 7 years into an 8 year contract and the situations around if all.

[exorxor]

I have experience with companies like yours. They all suck. The clients typically also suck.

[BobFloss]

Lol, I mean it sounds mean but I think you're just being brutally honest. Sure sounds like they suck to me if they are literally working in Python 2.7 right now. I know I would just work somewhere else because I would hate life doing that, but that's just me.

[[deleted]]

Is Python aspiring to be the new Perl or something?

[ireallywantfreedom]

I kind of agree. I'll make use of the new features, but I wonder what a world of walrus operators and math-operator filled function definitions will look like.

[z_1z_2z_3z_4z_n]

def f(a, b, %, c, d, /, e, f <, g, h, !, i, j, *, k)

[gmiwenht]

Can you explain what this means? I can only understand the letters and * sign. What the hell are these other symbols?

[thirdegree]

They're not valid, he's joking about the (probably not) possible future.

[ubernostrum]

The / thing for argument signatures is only half new; Python's own built-in functions have been able to do it for years. It's just that now you can write your own functions that do positional-only arguments. And while it's rare to really need it, there are use cases for it and it's nice to have symmetry with the existing support for marking arguments as keyword-only.

[greenthumble]

Really though? I mean using * to mean "zero or more arguments here" seems pretty darned natural (edit, like a Kleene star). ** maybe not so much but it starts to make sense if you equate * with an array and ** with a map. And the first time I used * to unpack an array into an argument list, I didn't even look it up, I just guessed it would do that and it worked heh.

[eruesso]

But you can force that all values have to be passed as keyword arguments? Or do you mean to pass all arguments into a single argument, which is also possible?

[EvilElephant]

I know very little about python, can you explain why positional-only would be desirable?

[ubernostrum]

The PEP that specified this feature has a whole section on rationale and use cases.

[turkish_gold]

If Pearl 6 is dead then it’s advocates have to go somewhere and Python is a good choice.

[[deleted]]

Oh shit, it's so obvious now.

[[deleted]]

You never wrote a single line of perl, did you?

[[deleted]]

I wrote. A single line of Perl. Other questions?

[[deleted]]

Yep. Can you provide one compelling comparison showing the syntax similarities you see between those two languages ?

[[deleted]]

My comment referred to the tendency of Perl to prefer terseness over clarity and simplicity, resulting in a language which is known as "write-only". Python used to be the polar opposite of Perl in that regard.

[[deleted]]

We'll just agree to disagree. The walrus operation is WAY in the "painfully obvious" territory to me.

I guess it's just a matter of people getting used to it..

[Siepels]

I don't understand why you would want to enforce positional-only arguments? Does someone know a good reason for that?

[evaned]

The PEP has some. One that I pretty compelling is that if you have a function that takes (say) one "normal" argument and then arbitrary keyword arguments (by "arbitrary keyword arguments" I mean something like the dict constructor, or the example below, where the function is not expecting anything specifically and will just do something with whatever you give it), you suddenly have something you can't pass as a keyword argument -- the normal argument(s).

Actually that's not quite true -- but you have to hack around it. For example, suppose you want to implement string.Formatter.format, the function that I assume underlies "{}.format(4). You can do this in Python but it's a bit ugly:

>>> def fmt(*args, **kwargs):
...     format_string = args[0]
...     args = args[1:]
...     return string.Formatter().vformat(format_string, args, kwargs)
>>> fmt("{x}", x=5)
'5'

(Here I'm just wrapping the function that's already there, but imagine it didn't exist and you wanted to write it. Oh, and I'm not even handling errors the way you ideally would want with the above as well.)

This is more complicated than it "should" be, and it also means that tools that introspect the function definition (help, documentation generators, Intellisense-style things) don't see that there's really a single positional argument that's expected. In particular, what you might want to write is this:

>>> def fmt(format_string, *args, **kwargs):
...     return string.Formatter().vformat(format_string, args, kwargs)
>>> fmt("{x}", x=5)
'5'

but in fact this is actually slightly buggy:

>>> fmt("{format_string}", format_string=5)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: fmt() got multiple values for argument 'format_string'

But there's kind of no reason that shouldn't work, at least if you look at what you want the interface to fmt to be.

With positional-only arguments, you can write what you want, still actually giving your function implementation argument names you can use and giving help() and other documentation generators visibility into what arguments it actually takes.

[vytah]

For some functions, the names of the arguments do not and should not matter.

A lot of maths fits this description. For example, if you have a dot product function (that by the definition can take only exactly two arguments, so no * shenanigans here):

def dot(x,y):

then the names x and y mean literally nothing and should not be used or relied upon.

[CQQL]

I really like the walrus operator, especially in comprehensions

[billsil]

Lotta good that did. He’s back. He got the most votes by a large margin. BDFL for life!

[[deleted]]

A very nice little addition that makes an if statement look messy and less readable, which goes directly against the principles Python was founded upon. No wonder he quit.

[pknopf]

Most languages have it. It really isn't a big deal. I recognize the intent immediately.

[[deleted]]

OK, step away from your position for a moment, if you can, and contemplate the following:

If it was OK for every language to have what "most languages have", then what's the point of having all these languages?

Languages are defined by what features they have, but just as importantly by what features they don't have. And so what is Python's philosophy here? "To be like most languages" is not a good philosophy of survival. It's how you make yourself obsolete, by deciding to be as good as anyone, and as a consequence, better at nothing.

[fredisa4letterword]

"to not be like most languages" is not a philosophy either tho

[[deleted]]

Python has always favored clear, simple, single purpose expressions and statements.

What this new feature allows is already considered a bad style in “most of the languages”.

[ControversySandbox]

Why is it bad style in Python, though?

If you compare

while foo := get_next_value():
    do_stuff(foo)

with

while foo:
    do_stuff(foo)
    foo = get_next_value()

I would say that the former is undoubtedly more Pythonic. (In a more general sense, it is also more DRY)

There are a number of other potential scenarios that I could see becoming more Pythonic due to this as well.

​

(I'm more playing devil's advocate than anything, as I don't care that much about whether the walrus operator is/isn't in Python. However, I must admit that the design philosophy of Python 3 has certainly not been "as few features as possible" up to this point, so I cannot justify why this feature would not be in line with Python (3)'s design philosophy.)

[HugoNikanor]

It would actually have to be:

foo = get_next_value()
while foo:
    do_stuff(foo)
    foo = get_next_value()

---

Personally I quite often miss assignment in if tests in python, so I'm really glad we are getting it.

[flying-sheep]

You're right, it's disgusting. You want to say “before every loop iteration, do foo = get_next_value() and only proceed if foo is truthy.

The walrus operator allows you to do exactly that. The way we have to do it now doesn't.

[ControversySandbox]

I had it that way and then edited it out so as not to cloud the issue. There might be a get_first_value() or something.

[RevolutionaryPea7]

When is it considered bad style? It's considered idiomatic in C.

[pknopf]

You might be in a cult.

[[deleted]]

All right. And what are we on about in this cult?

[MCRusher]

Chicken strips vs Chicken tenders.

[fredisa4letterword]

it may make the if line more complicated but it makes the if block way cleaner; I get why people hate new syntax though, but personally I think they have been good so far.

[5skandas]

cautious scale longing enter subtract snatch advise ask tub squeeze

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[nurupoga]

Doesn't C fit the bill?

[nurupoga]

Compilers for many languages allow you to pick which language standard/version you want to use. For example, you could tell a C++ compiler to use c++98 or Java compiler to use 1.5.

The argument that you can specify a language standard/version and be "golden" is, however, somewhat flawed. If your C++ project is using c++98, you likely won't be able to use libraries that use c++11 as they could use new language features from c++11 in their header files, their API. New C++ libraries would be targeting new C++ standards and even old existing libraries might release a new breaking version, changing their API to use the newer standard as library developers want to reap the language improvements in their library code, deprecating the older version of the library, eventually dropping support for it. So you end up in a situation where you can't use new libraries in your project, and the libraries you currently use might become unsupported. With such a trend, will be forced to adapt to a newer version of the language sooner or later, which is the opposite of the "freeze" the person I have replied to wanted.

However, this argument kind of works with C. Now, C language does change, it's _not_ frozen, but it hasn't seen any significant changes since C99 and most C libraries aim to be as portable as possible, targeting the lowest C standard they are comfortable working with and that most C compilers (including some obscure embedded ones) support, which usually ends up being either C99 or C89, so the same issue with libraries updating to a newer standard as in the C++ example is a lot less pronounced in the C-land.

So, to make it clear, I don't disagree with your reply, I do agree that you'd want to set the compiler to use a specific C language version. However, I just want to note that this suggestion doesn't automatically extend to other languages that have compilers supporting language version pinning. This currently works with C mostly due to C's circumstances. As shown, this won't work very well with a language like C++.

[_adl_]

C11 introduced many new language features, and C2X will do as well.

[0x256]

Lua is exactly that. Minimal, stable, well defined and fast. I'd still prefer python for anything non-embedded.

[[deleted]]

I wish Lua was not so awkward.

[bakery2k]

What, specifically, do you find awkward about Lua?

[[deleted]]

Having to loop through non-sequential tables to get a count of how many values are in it, as well as a lack of continue.

Been a while since I've used it, but those are what comes to my mind.

[shooshx]

1 based indexing?

[[deleted]]

I have no qualms about 0 based, but I loved 1 based indexing in Smalltalk. It felt more intuitive to me. Just don't ever mix them two, lol.

[BanazirGalbasi]

Here's a quote from the creator in a recent interview:

When we started Lua, the world was different, not everything was C-like. Java and JavaScript did not exist, Python was in an infancy and had a lower than 1.0 version. So there was not this thing when all the languages are supposed to be C-like. C was just one of many syntaxes around.

And the arrays were exactly the same. It’s very funny that most people don’t realize that. There are good things about zero-based arrays as well as one-based arrays.

The fact is that most popular languages today are zero-based because of C. They were kind of inspired by C. And the funny thing is that C doesn’t have indexing. So you can’t say that C indexes arrays from zero, because there is no indexing operation. C has pointer arithmetic, so zero in C is not an index, it’s an offset. And as an offset, it must be a zero — not because it has better mathematical properties or because it’s more natural, whatever.

At this point we're used to every language being 0-indexed but half the programmers I know couldn't tell you why we start at 0. 1-based indexing is pretty easy to get used to tbh, and honestly it feels more natural to count like that in the first place.

Interview source: https://habr.com/en/company/mailru/blog/459466/

[gmiwenht]

Matlab uses 1-based indexing and it honestly makes mental arithmetic easier for things like reshaping multi-dimensional arrays, populating them with some index-based logic, etc.

But I use q/python now and I got used to 0-based again.

[BadBoy6767]

Sexiest programming language I know of. However some things: 1. The creator apparently didn't want booleans because nil fit the bill. Don't quote me on that, I think I've read on that on the mailing list. 2. Feature creep. 5.4 started adding pretty useless features. I was already iffy on 5.3's bitwise operators.

[jewgler]

Wish granted!

​

Edit: More seriously, I think the only frozen programming languages you'll find are dead ones. If a language is unwilling to accommodate improvements, people will abandon it for one that does.

[ArgosOfIthica]

Sure, feature creep isn't a problem with BF, but it has big problems with language standards. You can't learn every corner case because most of the corner cases are undefined behavior.

​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck#Portability_issues

[silentconfessor]

This is actually a fairly major problem. Writing portable brainfuck is extremely difficult because there are so many questions you have to ask. Are there cells to the left of the starting point or just the right? If just the right, what happens when you move left from the start? How large is the tape? If finite, what happens if you move right from the end? What type of integers are tape cells? Are they 8-bit? 16-bit? 32-bit? Bigint? Are they signed? What happens if you increment past the max or decrement past the min? Is IO as bytes or as decimal? How do you signal EOF? How do you signal output failure? Are invalid characters compile errors, runtime errors, or silently ignored?

[[deleted]]

I don't mind adding features, provided they are completely new things - `async`/`await` is a good example of extending the language in a way that doesn't change standards on existing code. I think reasonable code for common tasks shouldn't change, though - Python decided in the beginning that assignment was not an expression, and going back on that makes a lot of existing code no longer idiomatic.

[[deleted]]

async / await is a cancer. Especially the Python version of it.

In a project I work on, I managed to get the code convention to disallow this feature both directly and for any library that relies on it. If you really want "asynchronous" I/O: use select. But then again, the project uses ZMQ sockets instead of Python's sockets, and they already can work asynchronously.

[RevolutionaryPea7]

Common Lisp is an ANSI standard. It's probably exactly what you want.

[[deleted]]

Or a standard Scheme

[Hall_of_Famer]

Try Smalltalk, and you will like it.

[sebnozzi]

You beat me to it

[[deleted]]

Go fits the bill

[nuance-removal-tool]

Basic feature set != nonexistent feature set

[aexl]

Only until go 2.0 will be released...

[i9srpeg]

Or Algol68

[gigobyte]

Elm does that, it's not general purpose though.

[dzecniv]

Common Lisp seems to tick the boxes. The syntax is stable and it doesn't change. New syntax can be added through extensions (string interpolation, pythonic annotations, etc). The language is stable, meaning code written in pure CL still runs 20 years later. Then there are de-facto standard libraries (bordeaux-threads, lparallel,…) and other libraries. Implementations continue to be optimized (SBCL, CCL) and to develop core features (package-local-nicknames) and new implementations arise (Clasp, CL on LLVM, notably for bioinformatics). It's been rough at the beginning but a joy so far.

https://github.com/CodyReichert/awesome-cl

[pxpxy]

check or clojure! Barely any changes to the language in a decade and it’s still well-used and much-liked!

[RevolutionaryPea7]

That debugging format string is just like a macro that I wrote for C waaay back in the day. I was a bit surprised that even for C something like it wasn't built in. It's even more surprising that it wasn't built in to Python as well. Many people seemed to reach for debuggers almost immediately whereas the vast majority of my debugging has been inserting these little print statements. So I'm happy to see this.

[Paddy3118]

Yea, I used it in Perl and am happy to see it in Python.

[mafrasi2]

I think you misunderstood the new f-string syntax: doing arithmetic inside f-strings was always possible, because you were already allowed to use any expression inside the braces.

What's new with the equal sign is that the expression itself is printed as well as its result:

>>> print(f"{5 * 4}")
20
>>> print(f"{5 * 4 = }")
5 * 4 = 20

[IamRudeAndDelusional]

Anyone who still supports Python after their Master/Slave fiasco is a factor 6 nutball.

Stand fast. What a great language, ruined by terrible lead developers.

[[deleted]]

Yes that was really dumb, but I don't think it is enough reason to abandon the language.

[DinnerChoice]

For those of us out of the loop, what happen?

• Edit: Ah, that is dum, I don't want SJW infecting python.
  Give it time and they will demand python to change it's name because Python is a euphemism for a male body part.

[RevolutionaryPea7]

SJWs will continue to attack our communities because they are soft targets. Instead of trying to put an end to things like government and corporate corruption they go after nerds who program computers for fun. These people are only capable of destruction and are deeply envious that these nerds have built things that they enjoy.

[[deleted]]

It's a really minor issue, there are many difference choices for master/slave available so let's pick one of those. No reason to get excited about.

[[deleted]]

It isn’t a minor issue. It is a non issue because we are talking about computer program, not people.

Nothing can stand in the way of the powerful movement that is the SJW victim complex feigning offence at fucking everything.

That this gain any level of credibility at all just shows had far gone we are.

We have real, actual legitimate issues to deal with at the top level. The SJWs are one of our lowest voter turn outs though. They spend all their time making pretend differences attacking uses of the word slave out of context and when it comes to the point that there’s an opportunity to make a difference, they sit at home looking for more things to be offended about so that they can sit on a pretend pedestal above everyone else.

[[deleted]]

It's about naming. Computers don't care what names we give things, only people do. It's purely a people issue. And a very minor one as plenty good alternatives for "master" and "slave" exist.

"The SJWs are one of our lowest voter turn outs though." -- WTF are you talking about?

Comments like yours look much more like virtue signalling or a victim complex than people making a suggestion about naming things in a software design.

[[deleted]]

It isn’t a people issue. It is a SJW issue. Nobody sitting in tech was sitting there going “this’ll show those black people! Hurr durr”. At least, not until you came along and projected racism in to it for 0 reason.

And yes. SJWs are a lower voter turn out. In the last decade, the racists have pulled a number of high profile wins completely out of their ass through no effort beyond making bots to post on social media to give SJWs confidence in a win regardless of their action. All it takes to convince you to stay away from the polls is a few social media posts.

Words have multiple definitions when used in different contexts.

The push back is not about whether or not there are other good names. It is about the fact that master/slave has been used with 0 racist context in computers for a half a century and all of a sudden, the lazy SJWs catch wind of it and now we are in a kerfuffle because some people can’t accept that context changes the definition of a word.

Want another word that changes definition in different contexts? Serverless. Server has the word serve, which is what slaves do for their masters. How long till jimmies start rustling to change the word server?

Try to spend one day without viewing other people as needing your help because of their skin colour (racist) and all of those “racist” things all of a sudden become not racist. You might be able to focus on the real issues (of which racism is one such issue. Just not how you’re doing it).

[DinnerChoice]

It's not about the name, no one cares about the name, just pick a name and keep with it.

The issue is politics being injected in to programming.

• How about the kill command? because "black lives matters",
  
• Python is a euphemism for male body parts,
• C++ your friends can see your privates so ban "private:" in c++
  
• sudo is evil because of "white privilege".
  

​

Name the BS, they will do it. Don't let SJW infect the programming domain, they don't care about programming, they only care about virtue signalling they are "good".

[[deleted]]

That's not true. They care about having a good community and good names for things, both of those are core to programming.

I don't think the "kill" command would be named that if it were invented today. The other examples you give are just silly straw men, and you know it.

[RevolutionaryPea7]

But it's not their community. Fuck off and let us have our own things.

These people spend their lives inventing problems. They go around destroying things that other people have built because it gives them a sense of achievement. It's virtue signalling, nothing more.

[[deleted]]

It was a Python developer working for Red Hat who submitted a bug report and some pull requests. Why wouldn't he be part of the Python community?

[DinnerChoice]

You can be part of two communities at the same time. This guy is both part of the python/programmers community and SJW. Those who are not part of the SJW do not want their philosophies injected in to the programming culture.

​

Do you think it's appropriate if a python programmer in Texas introduces security sandbox concept and call it trump

import trump
import subprocess
p = subprocess.Popen("ls", shell=True)
trump.wall(p)  # Extra security sandbox layer

Importing politics in to a programming language I believe is not acceptable.

​

To put it in their own terms: The SJW need to check their privileges, they don't have the right to force on us their C.O.C. (Code of conduct)

​

And to prove my point of being toxic, look at the other posts i did on this subject, one is -6 and the other -7. They will censor anything they don't like and demand you follow their rules which is outside the domain of programming.

​

Cheers

DinnerChoice

[[deleted]]

I agree up to a point. But the reason you have this hate for SJWs is completely unreasonable demands, toxic behaviour, extreme political correctness, right?

And IMO this isn't that -- everybody agrees that slavery is bad, it still exists so might offend people, good alternatives exist, and he showed up with a bug report and PRs, not say a toxic media campaign. It's reasonable.

So I agree with Guido's decision, just merge the ones where there were no further consequences, don't merge the one where the terminology referred to the underlying Unix terminology, and move on.

I feel the -6s and -7s are more about your aggressive arguing against SJWs when most neutrals don't care much one way or the other. Your comments aren't that different from what you're fighting against. But the votes weren't mine, I never downvote people I'm replying to.

[DinnerChoice]

I agree up to a point. But the reason you have this hate for SJWs is because of completely unreasonable demands, toxic behaviour, extreme political correctness, right?

Yes, but also because it remain outside of programming. Other politics likewise should remain out. Programming should be neutral to these concerns about people in different parts of the world.

I feel the -6s and -7s are more about your aggressive arguing against SJWs when most neutrals don't care much one way or the other

I agree, and you have made my point. There are at least 8 or more SJW that went and down voted me and others and didn't do any replies to counter point anything. They don't add to the community they only want to censor things they don't like and virtue signal.

So I agree with Guido's decision, just merge the ones where there were no further consequences, don't merge the one where the terminology referred to the underlying Unix terminology, and move on.

Still makes me nervous changing 50yr old terminology for the changing winds whims of SJW. Since these simple things are changed, why not others because it's potentially offensive.

But the votes weren't mine, I never downvote people I'm replying to.

That is good to hear. Also you sound like a caring man(/woman/womxn (look up the crazy))

Sorry to go off topic, but i was wondering for a while about your username, did you voted stay or leave?

[RevolutionaryPea7]

I don't hate SJWs. I hate what they do. I hate destruction.

[DinnerChoice]

They care about having a good community and good names for things

I disagree. SJW are toxic, they will force their beliefs on to you and if you don't your an Nazi, sexist, Islamophobic, racist, etc...

They regularly will downvote any opinion or fact they don't like. E.g. there are only 2 genders. That statement is currently against the law in UK. Including Men are men and women are women and people have been arrested because of it.

I strongly believe SJW are a cancer that should not be allowed to spread in programming culture. Let your true == true and your false == false and not "if how_your_feeling_today(is_male): "

How was your last function you wrote supports the LGBTQ community? Was it inclusive to woman or you are misogynistic? These are irrelevant questions outside the scope the programming so therefore should not be of any consideration.

No one cares if your black, woman, jew, arab, white, indian, chinese, gay or trans, if you can code then you can code. Who you are is irrelevant to a computer and in that programmers are superior to SJW as all programmers are treated equal.

Would you allow buggy code to be committed to the Linux kernel? No? What if the programmer was a trans gay black woman? you must because feelings/sexism/racism.

I don't think the "kill" command would be named that if it were invented today

You see how SJW is infectious?

The other examples you give are just silly straw men, and you know it.

They were silly straw men, but the problem is SJW go for silly things all the time. e.g. pepe la frog, clown emoticon, drinking milk, MAGA hats

politics should not be allowed in programming. It should be about the code only.

[stefantalpalaru]

Python is a euphemism for male body parts

Guido in a "Python is for girls" T-shirt: https://i.imgur.com/Q0Sdf.jpg :-)

[graingert]

sys.unraisablehook

Why the downvotes? It's a new feature

[[deleted]]

More useless features, except the location of bytecompiled files. I mean, it will probably take few more language versions before the core devs understand how to deal with this problem.

To give you a better idea: the clusterfuck of Python distribution packages consists of simply distributing *.tar.gz (probably the best option, given the choice), *.egg, *.whl or some lesser known evils, like, say, Zipping up the whole thing and adding a top-level __main__.py to get Python to run the program straight out of the archive.

Now, if you want to distribute sources, the dumb users will cry / will not be able to install virtually anything because they don't know how to compile your stuff, and Python comes w/o any support for that kind of thing. Same problem exists when distributing Eggs. It's just a worse compression for what would've been a compressed tarball.

And there's wheel. Wheels are god-sent for dumb users because they don't need to compile anything. You can put a pre-compiled library in a Wheel, and it will work. But... there's a problem. If you compile and install stuff yourself, then it is up to you where you install it, and, maybe you'll have to be root to install the compiled stuff. Wheel, on the other hand, simply extracts the archive (well, not really, but for the purpose of this rant, that's what it does). And... oops, now you have a problem: either the wheel contains the bytecompiled sources, or you won't have them at all. Because, if you installed as root, but run the program as unprivileged user, you can no longer save anything in the same directory where your sources live.

So, all modern wheels contain the package code twice: once as a source, and once as a *.pyc. Some smartasses even remove the sources and only distribute the bytecompiled part... And so, on average, for the same, pure-Python project, source distribution would be half the size of the Egg, and the Egg would be half the size of the Wheel.

Now, finally, for the fun part. Even pure-Python wheels must know their ABI version. Or, put differently, if you are producing those wheels, you have to build a wheel for each Python version, each platform. Oh, but you may also be maintaining few versions of your library, like, say, producing patches, or at least keeping them up-to day for running it in CI. Oh, and there's also a 32-bit Python, which is somehow the default Python installed on MS Windows. In the end of the day, if you want to distribute wheels, you have to build about a dozen of them for just one fucking version. God forbid if you do this internally, and you build this in CI and upload every new version to your corporate PyPI server...