Real problem: Mixing up Python 3 "the language" and "the implementation"

Posted Nov 12, 2009 15:08 UTC (Thu) by dwheeler (guest, #1216)
Parent article: Python moratorium and the future of 2.x

Python 3 is a nice *language*, but you can't move programs to it until all the libraries switch simultaneously because it has a completely different implementation. And that's silly.

What should happen is that there should be a single implementation that supports both the Python 2 and Python 3 languages. That way, people could incrementally transition.

Real problem: Mixing up Python 3 "the language" and "the implementation"

Posted Nov 13, 2009 12:39 UTC (Fri) by dag- (guest, #30207) [Link]

Right, much like HTML pages indicate what "dialect" they are talking, the python interpreter could understand such hints and do what is expected from it.

That makes much more sense then having to choose what /usr/bin/python is, and whether the new interpreter needs to be /usr/bin/python3 or not.

I am sure the Python developers thought about it and rejected it for some reason, but it seems the most practical way for a distribution or a programmer to migrate gradually their whole stack.