Was the move to Python 2.0 as big a deal?

[John Salerno]

Just curious if people put up any resistance to 2.0 like some people do
for 3.0. Was it as big of a change in the language, or was the
transition smoother? It seems silly for anyone to say they would prefer
to stick with 1.x versions at this point, so perhaps we'll get there
with 3.0 eventually too.

Anyway, I'm just trying to figure out if the whole "I don't like 3.0"
mentality (of some people, not all of course) is merely a result of it
still being new and not even released yet, and will completely go away
after a year or two; or if there really are such drastic changes that
people won't want to adopt it at all.

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22Martin_v=2E_L=F6wis=22?=]

Just curious if people put up any resistance to 2.0 like some people do

for 3.0.

IIRC, yes, it was. People have continued to use Python 1.5.2 afterwards
for several years.

Was it as big of a change in the language, or was the
transition smoother?

The changes were significantly smaller, so the transition was smoother.

It seems silly for anyone to say they would prefer
to stick with 1.x versions at this point, so perhaps we'll get there
with 3.0 eventually too.

People will continue to use 2.x for several years certainly.

Anyway, I'm just trying to figure out if the whole "I don't like 3.0"
mentality (of some people, not all of course) is merely a result of it
still being new and not even released yet, and will completely go away
after a year or two; or if there really are such drastic changes that
people won't want to adopt it at all.

A year or two won't be sufficient. IMO, the resistance is due to the
feeling "it will cause me efforts to change my code, and I don't like
additional efforts". This is a reasonable point to take, IMO, so people
who have the time and inclination to convert their code will do so,
and many others won't. Over time, people will convert the code when they
do have the time (or the feeling that they shouldn't push it away
further). Eventually, those people will convert that need some kind of
library (change) that is only available for 3.x.

Regards,
Martin

[Grant Edwards]

On 2008-06-14, John Salerno <jo******@gmailNOSPAM.comwrote:

Just curious if people put up any resistance to 2.0 like some
people do for 3.0.

Not that I remember.

Was it as big of a change in the language, or was the
transition smoother?

It was pretty much a non-event. The changes from 1.x->2.0 were
mostly all backwards-compatible.

Anyway, I'm just trying to figure out if the whole "I don't
like 3.0" mentality

From what I can tell, 2.x->3.0 is going to be a much larger
change than was 1.x->2.0. A lot of code is going break (that
wasn't true with the 1.x->2.0 transition).

(of some people, not all of course) is merely a result of it
still being new and not even released yet, and will completely
go away after a year or two; or if there really are such
drastic changes that people won't want to adopt it at all.

My prediction is that it will be pretty much universally
adopted. It may take a couple years and will involve some
bitching an moaning, but it's pretty much an identity that

open-source + Usenet == bitching and moaning

Some of us will always find something to complain about...

--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! I hope I bought the
at right relish ... zzzzzzzzz
visi.com ...

[Jason Scheirer]

On Jun 14, 9:35*am, John Salerno <[e-mail]:

Just curious if people put up any resistance to 2.0 like some people do
for 3.0. Was it as big of a change in the language, or was the
transition smoother? It seems silly for anyone to say they would prefer
to stick with 1.x versions at this point, so perhaps we'll get there
with 3.0 eventually too.

Anyway, I'm just trying to figure out if the whole "I don't like 3.0"
mentality (of some people, not all of course) is merely a result of it
still being new and not even released yet, and will completely go away
after a year or two; or if there really are such drastic changes that
people won't want to adopt it at all.

A lot of the bigger changes and warts that have emerged in the past
decade or so of the 2.0 series (text encoding madness anyone?) have
been tabled until the 3.0 transition, so any compatibility breaks for
the sake of fixing inconsistencies and ugliness in Python have been
accruing and are finally being applied in 3.0. The 1.5->2.0 transition
was a little strange, but I think a large reason that it was less
painful was because the language was younger, less established and had
far fewer people programming in it (and correspondingly smaller
codebases) to transition over.

[Terry Reedy]

"John Salerno" <jo******@gmailNOSPAM.comwrote in message
news:48***********************@cv.net...
| Just curious if people put up any resistance to 2.0 like some people do
| for 3.0. Was it as big of a change in the language, or was the
| transition smoother?

2.0 (from BeOpen) was essentially 1.6 (final CNRI version) rebranded.
A bigger change was 2.2 which introduced new-style classes, the new
iterator protocol, and generators.