Python 3.0 Released

licorna writes "The 3.0 version of Python (also known as Python3k and Python3000) just got released few hours ago. It's the first ever intentionally backwards-incompatible Python release."

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Re:Libraries

[Yvanhoe]

Last time I checked (several months ago) it was not thought that backward compatibility would be broken very hard. Most of the modification to do should be automatic so I think that a lot of packets that are still maintained will quickly be made compatible for python 3

You got time machine!

[gzipped_tar]

The cool thing about Python is it's "time machine". In Python 2.x you can "from __future__ import " to use features scheduled for future releases. With the release of Python 2.6 there's also a "2to3" tool that will point out revisions needed for 2.x code to be 3.0-compatible, and generate patches for you.

The Python developers have been aware of the difficult road of migration long before the release of Python 3, and they did a lot of careful planning and hard work for it. One of them being the __future__ module that has been there for quite long time just for this reason.

As a Python user, my hat off for them. I wish them success heartily.

BTW: In case you don't know, there's an Easter egg in the time machine: "from __future__ import braces" ;)

Re:That marks my end of use for Python

[shutdown -p now]

It's also cleanup of some stupid syntax that was there for ages. For example, exception handling. Old style:

try:
...
except (TypeError, ValueError): # catch both types of exceptions
...
except os.error, e: # catch exception and store into variable 'e'
...

New style:

try:
...
except (TypeError, ValueError): # catch both types of exceptions
...
except os.error as e: # catch exception and store into variable 'e'
...

It's fairly obvious that the latter is much clearer.

Re:Libraries

[bnenning]

But the idea of forcing that style on everyone annoys me enough to put me off of the language as a whole.

I had that exact reaction when I first came across Python. But after giving it a chance (many years later), I realized that it doesn't force a style any more than C forces the "style" of putting braces around blocks. Indentation levels are just syntax elements that happen to correspond to what most developers naturally do. Really, having to indicate blocks to the compiler in one way and to humans in another way is a DRY violation, which Python eliminates.