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Comment by mattdeboard | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I spent way too long at PyCon but I'm getting very weary of hearing about Python 3. Why is anyone surprised, or cheered, or dismayed, or excited, that one of the flagship Python projects will eventually be moving to Python 3 (experimental!) compatibility?

This is a sincere question by the way, just tempered by post-PyCon weariness.

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If you think you're tired about hearing about Python 3 try sitting in my seat! I got asked "when's Django moving to Python 3?" about thirty times a day at PyCon, and I think the other core devs did, too. We realized that although we had a plan in mind we hadn't communicated it well. Hence the blog post.

Sorry to bore you. Back to your regularly scheduled hacking.

> I got asked "when's Django moving to Python 3?" about thirty times a day at PyCon, and I think the other core devs did, too.

Get custom T-shirts printed? ;)

Thanks for the post, the road map should be a lot more clearer for users.

Wonder how many times you got asked how long you are going to hang on to Python 2.5 or even whether you/Django core devs get asked why can't they have Python 2.4 support.

Not that I care that much for environments stuck in 2.4 land, its last update was 7 years ago.

It's not that this post bored me, it's the "This is amazing/great/terrible/stupid" reaction to the news things are getting ported. Progress, time marches on, etc.

Django's lack of Python 3 support is big reason Python 3 adoption is slow, at least in the web dev faction of Python's community.

Why get comfy with Python 3 when you must remain attuned to the conventions and quirks of 2.x in order to use Python's most popular web framework? Folks keep talking about Python 3 because they really want to use it, but have reservations about adopting 3 when 3 isn't supported by useful frameworks.

Once Django supports Python 3, that reservation vanishes. Python 3 will be adopted by more people and get support from more frameworks.

tl:dr; Django's popularity holds dev community captive to Python 2.x, slows adoption of Python 3. Django team announces Python 3 support not in distant future but near future. Folks get excited. "About damn time."

Python != Web frameworks

You're severely underestimating the impact that the scientific computing community has over Python 3's slow adoption.

I don't understand your statement. Numpy has been ported on python 3 more than 18 months ago, and scipy followed quickly afterwards. Our download stats show rather little interest for python 3, BTW.

The numpy and scipy core may have been ported, but many of the Scikits (add on libraries to scipy), third party libraries and surrounding tools haven't. So most people will still go with python2 just in case they might need to use one of those tools or libraries later down the road.

+1 I had started learning Python 3. But my job now is on Django, so I am forced to use Python 2. I know a good number of people who had the same problem.

Personally the only reason that I am not using Python 3 right now is that Django doesn't support it, as that is the main library that I am supporting and using everyday.

Other libraries I use are smaller, can be replaced, or I could rewrite them.

I am quite sure that I am not in a minority.

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