“Python 3.0 (a.k.a. ‘Python 3000’ or ‘Py3k’) is a new version of the language that is incompatible with the 2.x line of releases. The language is mostly the same, but many details, especially how built-in objects like dictionaries and strings work, have changed considerably, and a lot of deprecated features have finally been removed. Also, the standard library has been reorganized in a few prominent places.” See what’s new in Python 3.0 for differences between 2.x and 3.x.
all hail the glory of python. the best keeps getting better. perfectly summed up here.
http://xkcd.com/353/
I linked to that over on lwn, and someone immediately pointed out that the strip needs to be ported to 3.0. 😉
print(“””Just to start things off, I’d like to make a few comments about 3.0.
First, congratulations to the Python devs. This has been cooking for 3 years and it’s nice to see a final release out.
As I look around in the Python community, I don’t see huge amounts of excitement. I consider this to be a good thing. It reminds me a lot of the Apache 2.0 release. From the user’s perspective, it was not a massive overhaul. And it was the sort of thing that was good to have long-term, but no one was in a huge hurry to upgrade since the current version was serving them very nicely. Python 2.x is serving most python programmers very nicely.
In general, the “top of the food chain” apps like Django are planning on taking their time, working toward full compatibility with 3.0 in about a year or so. The language has not really changed all that much. But some of the things that did change are not trivial to rewrite for, and there is no perceived reason to hurry. (Also, many projects want to maintain compatibility with 2.4 for a while, and having 3.0 compatibility too means a nontrivial amount of extra maintenance overhead.)
Expect the smaller, “building block” modules to come out with 3.0 versions more quickly.
The story link has the low-down on just what changed. And considering that it is the result of 20 years of 20-20 hindsight, I think it is pretty remarkable how little *has* actually changed. Guido and the other early designers of Python, back in the late 80s and early 90s apparently did a pretty impressive job of thinking things out from the start. And perhaps that is where the real congratulations should be given.
Steve Bergman”””)
Edited 2008-12-05 19:19 UTC
http://www.flickr.com/photos/john_lam/1910968816/
(for those that don’t know, Matz is the guy who came up with ruby, and maintains the cannonical ruby implementation)
As opposed to “maintains Canonical’s Ruby implementation”, of course.
Despite the competition, Python and Ruby programmers share quite a lot. The full video of “Snakes and Rubies”, a combined Ruby/Python event, is available here from YouTube:
http://tinyurl.com/6aj49k
It’s long. But also interesting, entertaining, and fun.
Edited 2008-12-05 20:27 UTC
I like to say that the entire programming population can be divided into two groups, the ruby guys and the python guys. Both are phenomenal languages, one just takes a slightly more conservative bent on language mutability.
The difference that most jumps out at me is that Python guys are more conservative regarding the “Explicit vs Implicit” question, more strongly favoring “explicit”. The Ruby guys tend not to mind letting the code do more behind the scenes, which the Python guys call “magic” and tend to disfavor. The Ruby guys push “Convention over Configuration” more (ala Rails). Of course, compared to languages like Java, they both do.
Edited 2008-12-05 20:31 UTC
I dont think this holds true per se.
First, the communities are not that separate. I know quite some ruby guys (i am a ruby guy myself) who write in python as well.
I could also see myself maintaing well written python code, i.e. much more likely than perl. In this regard both ruby and python have a quite similar mindset in the sense that both are growing scripting languages (with python being bigger). In this sense we have a lot of enemies – php, perl, java.
In the end, languages which are better will gain the younger folks. And if they stick with the language, the language will grow a lot. This is the biggest problem for perl – php, python and ruby hit perl’s growing user base a LOT. There is a lot more competition these days than there used to be.
Now I can’t just wait for Ruby 2.0
Congrats to the Python world!
Python for S60 is Nokia’s port of the Python language to the (Nokia) S60 smartphone platform. In addition to the standard features of the Python language, PyS60 provides access to many of the phone’s uniquely smartphone-y functions, such as camera, contacts, calendar, audio recording and playing, TCP/IP and Bluetooth communications and simple telephony.
It’s open source, under Apache 2 and Python licenses.
Links:
http://opensource.nokia.com/projects/pythonfors60/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pys60
http://wiki.opensource.nokia.com/projects/Python_for_S60
Edited 2008-12-07 22:49 UTC
I’ve been using the 3.0 beta for a while and I have been really impressed with the cleanup the Python team has done.
I am also very happy with the improved Unicode support.
I’ll still be using 2.5 for a while due to a bunch of Django code, but like others have said, that’s OK because 2.5.2 is a great version of Python too.