Well, what called your name to my attention, and what brought me to this blog, was the wonderful new multiprocessing module, and a desire to thank the people who made it possible. I've been working with it the last few days. Getting to know it. Comparing its performance with the threading module on code I have converted. And I am exceedingly impressed. The performance sparkles. The ease of conversion from threading to multiprocessing is amazing. The additional memory overhead, compared to threads, seems to be surprisingly small in my tests (under Linux). The performance of Queue particularly surprises me. I had known *of* this module for a couple of months. But this is the first time I've picked it up and *used* it. Color me excited. And I'm not just saying that to cheer you up. Like I say, I sought out this blog with the express purpose of saying it.

Message passing, FTW!

-Steve Bergman

What about promotion of the language? We're not going to have to live with all those bits of “unbeauty” forever. Just for a few more years.

“”"
which version newcomers should use,
“”"

Use “python 2.6 -3 -tt” for now. I think that's clear enough to those in the know. This will no doubt have to be stated an restated frequently. Yes, new folks will have a tendency to want to start with the “latest and greatest”. In a couple of years, 3.0 will probably be the natural choice.

“”"
availability of books or learning materials,
“”"

There is *already* at least one book available with 3.0 coverage. The next iteration of books with duly have that little “Covers 3.0!” triangle in the bottom right corner or wherever, just like they've said “Covers 2.4!”, etc. in the past.

“”"
the gulf between the objectives of the core developers and the users, or just the plain confusion that you get when someone puts something different out under the same name, that's supposedly FUD and the critic a “hater”.
“”"

Yes, that last quoted segment is unsubstantiated FUD.

“”"
A really good critical summary of Python 3.0 is the following referenced comment. Note its brevity (in contrast to paragraphs upon paragraphs about monkeys
from one commentator):
“”"

Trivializing James' post in that way is, in my opinion, in poor taste, and an application of exactly what it is that you claim people are doing to you.

Frankly, I've noted more “Chicken Littles” than haters in the community. The sky is not falling. 3.x is not that different from 2.x from a programmer's perspective. More so from a code maintainer's perspective. But over the next couple of years the conversion tools should evolve, and 2.6+ code will make up an increasing portion extant Python code base, and earlier versions will be less relevant. Yes there will be pain for maintainers of older code bases. But somewhat less than what I've read some fear-mongers predicting.

Python 3.x is and has always been about about the long term. And I wish more people understood that.

Well, what called your name to my attention, and what brought me to this blog, was the wonderful new multiprocessing module, and a desire to thank the people who made it possible. I've been working with it the last few days. Getting to know it. Comparing its performance with the threading module on code I have converted. And I am exceedingly impressed. The performance sparkles. The ease of conversion from threading to multiprocessing is amazing. The additional memory overhead, compared to threads, seems to be surprisingly small in my tests (under Linux). The performance of Queue particularly surprises me. I had known *of* this module for a couple of months. But this is the first time I've picked it up and *used* it. Color me excited. And I'm not just saying that to cheer you up. Like I say, I sought out this blog with the express purpose of saying it.

Message passing, FTW!

-Steve Bergman

What about promotion of the language? We're not going to have to live with all those bits of “unbeauty” forever. Just for a few more years.

“”"
which version newcomers should use,
“”"

Use “python 2.6 -3 -tt” for now. I think that's clear enough to those in the know. This will no doubt have to be stated an restated frequently. Yes, new folks will have a tendency to want to start with the “latest and greatest”. In a couple of years, 3.0 will probably be the natural choice.

“”"
availability of books or learning materials,
“”"

There is *already* at least one book available with 3.0 coverage. The next iteration of books with duly have that little “Covers 3.0!” triangle in the bottom right corner or wherever, just like they've said “Covers 2.4!”, etc. in the past.

“”"
the gulf between the objectives of the core developers and the users, or just the plain confusion that you get when someone puts something different out under the same name, that's supposedly FUD and the critic a “hater”.
“”"

Yes, that last quoted segment is unsubstantiated FUD.

“”"
A really good critical summary of Python 3.0 is the following referenced comment. Note its brevity (in contrast to paragraphs upon paragraphs about monkeys
from one commentator):
“”"

Trivializing James' post in that way is, in my opinion, in poor taste, and an application of exactly what it is that you claim people are doing to you.

Frankly, I've noted more “Chicken Littles” than haters in the community. The sky is not falling. 3.x is not that different from 2.x from a programmer's perspective. More so from a code maintainer's perspective. But over the next couple of years the conversion tools should evolve, and 2.6+ code will make up an increasing portion extant Python code base, and earlier versions will be less relevant. Yes there will be pain for maintainers of older code bases. But somewhat less than what I've read some fear-mongers predicting.

Python 3.x is and has always been about about the long term. And I wish more people understood that.

Not to mention, the inclusion of a fiber-based threading system (which is what erlang uses) should in no way break backwards compatibility if it is done in addition to the current threading implementation. Twisted is not the one true answer in the python community anyways. Take a look at Kamaelia, multiprocessing, Dramatis, etc.

Not to mention: No, it doesn't need this to “really take off” – concurrency is not the primary goal or design center for Python. However, the design center does not exclude the possibility of a well done concurrency system.

I was actually talking to someone about this earlier – both “sides” need to be civil. As long as there aren't blatant factual errors, religiously-loaded statements (“if you don't love py3k, you hate freedom”) or outright flamebait, there's no reason to not keep it civil.

I agree, negative tones – on both sides of any discussion can cause people to not want to explore things further.

That being said: The FUD I cited in my post was less in the post – but the ensuing comments. There was a lot of confusion and misconceptions in a lot of it, and some in the original post.

I don't think you're a “hater” – as for zooko, he isn't either. But you, me, and others are going to have to agree to disagree. Python 3000 wasn't supposed to be a new species: it is designed to be a jump in the evolution of the language.

Python 3k will not reach widespread adoption for some time – Myself? I won't be using it production for at least a year, if not longer: my list of library dependencies is frightening, not to mention while I might hack on it/stuff for fun – I still need to target a 2.x release for work.

I am a fan of python 3, I think it's cleaner, I think the bytes/unicode fixing was needed, and I am always for sacrificing backwards compatibility to grossly adjust the path of things.

Time will tell w/ Py3k. I'm recommending to people I know they learn 2.6, 2.6 will be around for awhile, and I'd put money on the table that 2.7 is in the pipe too. This means that Py3k will have time to mature, and perhaps the migration path will be smoother.

No one, at least, no one I pay attention to, in the python core group has any mistaken impressions about the real-world effects and consequences of py3k. If they didn't, they would not have constrained themselves as much as they did, and we'd have a perl 6 on our hands.

So where's the FUD factor? It seems to me that whenever anyone brings up inconvenient issues like the promotion of the language, which version newcomers should use, availability of books or learning materials, the gulf between the objectives of the core developers and the users, or just the plain confusion that you get when someone puts something different out under the same name, that's supposedly FUD and the critic a “hater”.

A really good critical summary of Python 3.0 is the following referenced comment. Note its brevity (in contrast to paragraphs upon paragraphs about monkeys from one commentator):

http://lwn.net/Articles/310071/

I guess the negativity makes the commenter a “hater”. And since I've actually signalled agreement with him, maybe I'm a “hater”, too. I know my voice counts for virtually nothing in this and many other matters, but if it encourages other people to voice their concerns, I'll gladly point out the above inconveniences as I see them. At least I have the satisfaction of knowing that I've encouraged others to remain in and interact with the community instead of walking away in frustration and disgust.