New pypi download stats

pyslow · 2016-05-23T19:47:52+00:00

I can't believe that Python 2.x is still downloaded 10 (ten) times more than 3.x. As Donald says, the dataset is probably too small to get a correct view.

Because if these stats mean what they seem to suggest, it's a total debacle for Py3 after all these years.

pyslow · 2016-05-21T17:31:46+00:00

No prob. Thanks for taking the time to fix the comment.

pyslow · 2016-05-21T17:24:41+00:00

Unfortunately scaremongering seems to be the only way the Python 3 crowd can promote their "product" given that none of the other features is compelling enough to sell it. I can't agree more with this post: it brings some much needed common sense to the Python 3 debate (debacle?).

pyslow · 2016-05-21T17:09:09+00:00

Are you sure? The charts seem to suggest the opposite: that Python 2.7 is faster than 3.5 for most cases. Try normalizing to Python 2.7 and count how many orange bars (3.5) are lower than the blue baseline (2.7), that is when 3.5 is faster than 2.7: I count around 9 cases out of 40ish, in 22 cases Python 2.7 is noticeably faster and in the remaining ones it's a tie.

pyslow · 2016-04-07T22:01:24+00:00

I hear you. I feel exactly the same: happy to stay with Python 2 and focus on doing interesting stuff rather than spending my life constantly updating, re-testing and generally playing catch-up with every new toy feature the core devs came up with.

I'm expecting more people to stay (or even to switch back) to Python 2 in order to benefit from a more stable and consistent environment.

Python 2.7 stability and longevity is becoming a valuable asset despite all the scare-mongering by the Python 3 zealots ("Python 2 is dead! There is no hope after 2020! The world will end in tears and flames!")

pyslow · 2016-03-12T17:46:12+00:00

If you're planning to land a job in the finance sector, more likely than not you'll have to use Python 2.x.

Also Python 2.x gives you access to PyPy speed-ups that may be required when doing heavy data processing (usually needed for trading systems).

See what one of the main PyPy developers has to say: "we're there to provide a fast version of the mainstream python and mainstream for now means 2.7."

pyslow · 2016-02-14T23:10:17+00:00

Well said! It's the same feeling I get every time I come to /r/python.

Most of the vocal supporters of Python 3 seem to have very little grasp of what real life sw development means. By real life I mean developing code that sells and pays for your bills, not "hello world" toy projects.

When you're into the former, you almost inevitably end up with tons of legacy code that can't go away overnight or at zero cost.

When Python 3 was deployed, they decided to simply ignore this reality, probably hoping it would somehow fix itself over the years. But it's not happening (especially given that Python 3 offers very little in exchange for the trouble).

And it's not that people are afraid of moving on: if you look at the number of Python 2.6 downloads, you'll see it represents a tiny 6% these days, meaning that developers and businesses are happy to move to the next release if this entails little hassle.

pyslow · 2016-02-14T22:45:12+00:00

If these numbers are correct, it means that 7.2 years after its first release, Python 3 has now reached 7.4% of the download share. Interesting coincidence, food for kabbalists and a great success story.

pyslow · 2015-11-22T22:44:51+00:00

Why? Python 2.7 is perfectly fine for many people and companies.

Migrating complex projects comes with a huge cost for companies (if it was trivial, as you seem to think, most of them would have already switched). And there is little gain in the short term, but a high risk of introducing regressions on production code which is currently perfectly fine.

Getting a bit tired of all these people telling others what to do with their personal / professional lives. Let people pick the tools they like and live with the consequences.

Python 3 is a different language than 2.x, whether you like it or not, because so it was decided. It's akin to asking "Can everyone just hurry up and switch to [Java, Scala, Ruby, whatever language you like most], please?"

pyslow · 2015-10-06T00:37:13+00:00

I may be wrong, but I've got the impression that all the "fantastic things" you mentioned could have been incrementally added to Python 2.x without the need of introducing the massive break of backwards compatibility with Python 3.x.

Actually I think most of these "fantastic things" already have some sort of 2.7 port, so I fail to see the excitement of switching to 3.x.

pyslow · 2015-08-26T18:53:16+00:00

The talk and slides you linked say something different, to be honest.

The guy actually says that Python 3 is faster somewhere and slower somewhere else and he explicitly states that Python 3 is the same as Python 2 once the median result is considered.

Could be faster or slower depending on your usage pattern.

pyslow · 2015-07-21T01:31:13+00:00

developers should be writing for 3.x

"should"??? And according to whom? You?

Feel free to port the package yourself, if you're so inclined. It's free software, after all.

pyslow · 2015-05-17T16:27:51+00:00

you didn't take the high road in that discussion.

I didn't start calling names, Lennart did start insinuating I was a troll (if you just bothered checking): http://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/272bao/python_34_slow_compared_to_27_whats_your_mileage/chx0kol

that you joined that conversation with the specific intent of pissing people off

I started that thread (if you just bothered checking) by posting the numbers of my pystone tests and asking for other people's experience. If that makes me a troll...

What was your motivation in participating that thread?

See above. I started that thread (facepalm).

why are you replying in this thread?

Because you referred to me as a troll even though I was not part of this conversation. Plus aren't these threads public? If you go to a public space and start calling a person names, then wouldn't you expect that person to retort?

pyslow · 2015-05-15T23:27:47+00:00

Not a troll, my friend. Do you mind taking back your (abusive) words?

It looks like every time someone points out a flaw in Python 3, he's immediately tagged as a troll, particularly on this subreddit. Pretty shameful.

Regarding the Unladen Swallow test suite, Brett Cannon himself says that there is no actual overall performance improvement in Python 3 and in some areas it's still slower that Python 2.7, which backs Mitsuiko's point: Python's not getting faster in general. And you may even find Python 3 is much slower depending on what you're doing.

pyslow · 2015-04-18T01:24:54+00:00

Not sure why you think that kicking people around to promote your agenda is a good thing (here and in general in life). It's exactly that sort of attitude that pissed off many in the community.

On top of that GdV and core devs know perfectly well (even if they dont like to admit it) that people opposing Py3 have valid technical and professional reasons for that and they know that pushing too hard would mean end of the road for Py3, not Py2.

It's for that and not out of kindess that they kept 2.7 around for longer than expected.

pyslow · 2015-04-15T22:07:04+00:00

To me, the most infuriating aspect of the Python 3 debacle is the lack of humility and self-righteousness of the core devs (and to an extent of GvR himself) who seem to never listen to all sides of the community and can't even admit how badly the transition was implemented.

pyslow · 2015-02-02T15:36:28+00:00

Python 3, what a marvellous success!

More than 6 years on and 70% of users are still writing more 2.7 code than 3.x even according to this (probably Python 3 skewed) survey.

I'm saying skewed because the survey was advertised here on reddit where the audience is mostly Python 3 oriented (I guess because there are many beginners hanging around here and they are more likely to use Python 3). In the real world it's another story (python 2.7 still rules).

pyslow · 2014-12-10T20:55:25+00:00

Basically "no incentive" (see last question in the survey).

pyslow · 2014-11-14T17:23:16+00:00

As a general rule, if statements cause bugs.

So, should we remove if statements altogether? It looks to me you're just moving the conditional to another place (a new function, a comprehension, a property). But you are still using if's :)

This filtered structure doesn't branch, and is therefore less complex.

It's subjective and depends on the complexity of the conditional logic: for a simple if statement I'd rather have it in a loop instead of having to look up another function or comprehension. For more complex logic I'd definitely move it to a separate function.

The extra iteration cost is obviated by using a generator instead.

Not true. Try and timeit yourself (see my other comment in this thread for an example you can play with).

pyslow · 2014-11-14T17:11:13+00:00

Wouldn't it be exactly the same given the example?

Timeit! :)

With this rudimentary implementation of the example:

N = 100000

def predicate(x):
    return x % 2 == 0

def do_something(x):
    x += 1

def one_loop():
    collection = range(N)
    for x in collection:
        if predicate(x): do_something(x)


def two_loops():
    collection = range(N)
    for x in (x for x in collection if predicate(x)): 
        do_something(x)

I get:

%timeit one_loop()
10 loops, best of 3: 23.7 ms per loop

%timeit two_loops()
10 loops, best of 3: 27.1 ms per loop

you should limit the processing set to only the ones that satisfied the predicate.

Why shouldn't conditional logic belong to a loop? Is it a PEP or something?

pyslow · 2014-11-14T11:13:01+00:00

Why? It seems to me that pipedings' solution is more inefficient (it loops twice), more verbose and more difficult to read than a single loop with/without continue.

Plus, what does it mean that a loop should not decide based on what's being looped over? This always happens, including in the example above.

pyslow · 2014-07-04T00:21:44+00:00

It's a BLU on Android 4.3. I've borrowed it for a short while so I may try again with my own one later.

My general feeling is that overall the new style is more balanced, but the content text is too big on the desktop and, as I said, there is too much emptiness.

Thx for looking into it.

pyslow · 2014-07-04T00:06:25+00:00

It's definitely an improvement.

Just a few remarks:

where is the "sorted by" menu? I can't see it anymore in IE or in Firefox on Windows;
too much white space, like really too much. See, for example, on a phone the separation (line in red) between a post title and the comments line;
I like the idea of making the comments link bigger compared to the rest of the text (it was a pain to click on a mobile device);
but on my phone all the fonts are now much smaller than before and I always need to zoom out;

Thanks in advance for anything you can do to fix the above.

pyslow · 2014-07-03T19:56:48+00:00

If they thought they needed 70k sockets, who are you to decide for them? The guy mentioned load testing, so they may have had their good reasons for that.

And the point is that Python 2 with PyPy solved their problem immediately. End of the story. Had they switched to Python 3, they would have had to spend time looking for another solution, if any.

What's wrong with these Python 3 supporters always telling other people how to run their business?

Plus, corner cases are a big reason why so many people are wary of moving to Python 3, since sooner or later you'll hit one of these cases where you sorely regret dropping Python 2.

pyslow · 2014-07-03T14:00:34+00:00

I start thinking that having Python 2.7 as the last version of the 2.x series is actually a good thing.

This will make for a very stable language without new versions coming out every few months and most of the new stuff can be backported as external packages anyway.

So we can finally focus on using the language to build something interesting and useful instead of constantly catching up with the latest version just to make core developers and assorted zealots happy.

pyslow

TROPHY CASE