Which turned into a big internet fight, and he changed his mind.
It's good to see people willing to change the way they do things, especially when that means publicly contradicting their former selves and with such an intense personality. It's oddly inspiring.
Also, when he wrote it was kind of true. A lot of things hadn't been ported to Python 3 yet and using it was asking for pain. Now finally we are in the opposite situation where many things are ending support for Python 2 and the easier route is Python 3.
He updated it a few months ago, but he's had versions of this for quite some time. Yes, maintaining it in late 2016 is somewhat stubborn, but it made a lot of sense in the early years of Python 3.
I have a difficult time believing that we're talking about the same rant, because the one I'm talking about would not have made any sense even in the early years of Python 3.
Oh, I see it's been updated with a sober disclaimer now, where "In the previous version I trolled people" and "I even had a note after the gag saying it was a gag, but everyone is too stupid to read that note even when they do elaborate responses to my writing."
I read his writing very carefully. This note didn't exist.
For those of you now breaking out the Internet Archive to prove the note existed
> "Yes, that is kind of funny way of saying that there's no reason why Python 2 and Python 3 can't coexist other than the Python project's incompetence and arrogance. Obviously it's theoretically possible to run Python 2 in Python 3, but until they do it then they have decided to say that Python 3 cannot run one other Turing complete language so logically Python 3 is not Turing complete."
Even though he says it's a "funny" way to say something, his explanation of said "joke" is not a correct description of what Turing completeness is. There is no "gag" here; Zed didn't understand it, and when people on the internet corrected him, he decided to play it off as a gag.
Edit: Just to make it explicit for those of you reading who don't get it, "Turing completeness" doesn't mean "I can run a program written in X in Y's runtime." It means that a language is capable of expressing all operations a Turing machine can do, which means that you can re-write a program in X to a program in Y if both X and Y are Turing complete. You can obviously re-write a Python 2 program to be a Python 3 program, so both of those languages are Turing complete.
The property he describes later, of the JVM and the CLR supporting multiple languages has absolutely nothing to do with Turing completeness. Lisp and Javascript are both Turing complete languages, but the fact that you can't run Lisp on Node.js doesn't mean you can't re-write a Lisp program in Javascript. The fact that he's equating being able to run many languages on a single runtime and Turing compleness means he doesn't understand what he's talking about.
Yes, that is kind of funny way of saying that there's no reason why Python 2 and Python 3 can't coexist other than the Python project's incompetence and arrogance. Obviously it's theoretically possible to run Python 2 in Python 3, but until they do it then they have decided to say that Python 3 cannot run one other Turing complete language so logically Python 3 is not Turing complete. I should also mention that as stupid as that sounds, actual Python project developers have told me this, so it's their position that their own language is not Turing complete.
You didn't read it carefully enough. It did exist.
It read:
"Yes, that is kind of funny way of saying that there's no reason why Python 2 and Python 3 can't coexist other than the Python project's incompetence and arrogance. Obviously it's theoretically possible to run Python 2 in Python 3, but until they do it then they have decided to say that Python 3 cannot run one other Turing complete language so logically Python 3 is not Turing complete. I should also mention that as stupid as that sounds, actual Python project developers have told me this, so it's their position that their own language is not Turing complete."
I think Zed was in the majority when it came to Py3. He kind of comes off as a jerk due to his personality, but I really like his approach and he always makes me think. I might not agree with him but he certainly is not boring. Looking at Pandas which is a R like library. Wes wrote his book in Py2 and did not have any desire for Py3.
I moved from Python mostly to using R, Racket and Haxe for my other side projects. This infighting just left a bad taste in my mouth and started seeing greener pastures, which for once in my life were in fact greener. I still love Python but I don't use it much due to community drama.
> Wes wrote his book in Py2 and did not have any desire for Py3
I find it hard to believe you're citing a book that was published in 2012[1], when it made sense to still target Python 2, as relevant to today's argument. The new version is updated for Python 3.5[2].
I am totally confused. Zed Shaw wrote in 2010 how he didn't like Python 3 and his book wasn't going to show Python 3. Then he edited the note in November 2016 restating his position again.
Sometime between November 2016 to today he decided to release a Python 3 version.
I mention that the original idea that Python 3 was not a good practice in 2010 and was the majority view and again in 2012 a major library was released with Python 2 as its main target with the majority of the community was fine with the Python 2 focus.
Why am I making no sense time line?
I like Zed Shaw as a member of the Python community and I was defending his stance on sticking with Python 2 (I personal supported Python 3 since announcement)
So what is you agree and disagree with totally?????
Don't blame the community for that. Blame Guido and the core development team. The community at-large weren't rallying for breaking changes to the language. GvR wanted that, it's "his" language afterall. Of course some of the community are more conservative and were willing to more quickly fall in line to goosestep with the core team on Python3. So the tension stems from the Python3 folks having extreme disdain for all the Python2 users and codebases.
I agree with you though, it's what got me looking towards other tech like Node, Go, Elixir. I can look past it all except for the fact they got 'unicode by default' wrong. They should simply do what Go does, everything is a bytestring with assumed encoding as UTF8. What they have today is ridiculous and needs changed before I could embrace Python3+.
I can't understand what's going on with the Python community for folks to even make statements like yours. It has to be an influx of new Python developers who started on 3.
Python2 has unicode support. Python2 already had (better) async IO with Gevent (Tornado is also there). There's just nothing there with Python3 except what I can only describe as propaganda from the Python Software Foundation that has led to outright ignorance with many users.
Some people wanted "unicode strings by default". Which Python3 does have, but they even got that wrong. The general consensus on how to handle this correctly is to make everything a bytestring and assume the encoding as being UTF8 by default. Then like Python2, it just works.
I normally wouldn't respond to any comments that are merely a link to someone elses thoughts without something original of your own. Because it means you likely don't know what you're talking about and merely attempting to speak through someone else because you think you agree. So I will respond not to your benefit but for anyone else who is new to Python and may come across this.
I've read that before and the author is ignorant. He's parroting GvR & the CPython core development team's line that unicode strings are codepoints. Sure, but he's arguing with himself and note the argument is Python2 vs 3. That narrow focus is what results in his tunnelvision. As a result of the argument as he frames it, Python3 is not better than Python2 in string handling, it's merely different. One favors POSIX (Linux), Python2. One favors the Windows way of doing things, Python3.
There is an outright better way to handle strings. It's what Google did with Go. How do we know it's better? Well, it is because it makes more sense on technical merits and members of the CPython core dev team have admitted that if Python3 were designed today they would go down this path. But during the initial Python3000 talks this option was not as obvious. Bad timing or poor implementation choices. Take your pick, given the runaway feature-soup that Python3 has become I'd assume both.
So like all tech, let Python3 live or die on its technical merits. That's exactly what the PSF has been afraid of, so we have the 2020 date which is nothing more than a political stunt among others. Python3 is merely different, it favors one usecase over another, but did not outright make Python better. To break a language for technical churn is and was a terrible idea.
You're right, I do lean towards agreeing with the author of the blog post. However, I wasn't (and am still not) in any way certain, and didn't want to be one of those asses you see on the internet who turn everything into a religious war. So I just put the information out there because I (in my ignorance) thought it was useful information from which intelligent people could draw their own conclusions.
Honestly, I don't care a great deal about string handling in Python and just wanted to inject (what I thought was) more information into the discussion. I'm kinda regretting that now. Lesson learned: steer clear and leave it to the experts.
"Learning Python 3 is not in your best interest" REALLY? Learn Python 3 and you can work your way around Python 2 code if needed (except for Unicode problems which are tough even for people accustomed with Python 2 and which is a sore thumb that needs to be fixed hence Python 3)
Yes, I though Python 2 was good and Python 3 was irrelevant. That was 5 years ago though.
Reading stuff like "The fact that you can’t run Python 2 and Python 3 at the same time"? Really? Fake news anyone?
If you try to ignore your bias against the person, it's actually admirable that someone can change their mind on a controversial topic instead of digging heels in stubbornly.
It's good to see people willing to change the way they do things, especially when that means publicly contradicting their former selves and with such an intense personality. It's oddly inspiring.