If there’s an Andre 3000 and a Python 3000,
why not a Guido 3000?
(This photo originally appeared in this entry.)
Python 3000, or Python 3.0 as it’s officially known, is out! If you want to get your paws on it right now, here’s its download page.
Python BDFL (Benevolent Dictator for Life) and Google employee (Python’s his “50% project”) Guido van Rossum makes it very clear in What’s New in Python 3.0 that this is the first-ever intentionally backwards-incompatible Python and features more changes that in a typical Python release. Although this is the sort of thing that usually invites screams from anguished developers, I’m cool with it; although if found Python to be a very pleasurable language to work in, there’s a fair bit of junk that’s accumulated as both the language and the programming scene have evolved. Guido says: “after digesting the changes, you’ll find that Python really hasn’t changed all that much – by and large, we’re mostly fixing well-known annoyances and warts, and removing a lot of old cruft.” Sometimes you have to break backward compatibility to move forward.
I’m hoping to noodle with Python 3000 during the Christmas downtime, but if Python is your bread and butter, I suggest you start looking at the new version ASAP. They’re changes a-plenty that you might stumble on, but as Andre 3000 might say, “It’s all hood.”
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Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.