Python 3.4 Released

New submitter gadfium writes: "Python 3.4 has been released. It adds new library features, bug fixes, and security improvements. It includes: at standardized implementation of enumeration types, a statistics module, improvements to object finalization, a more secure and interchangeable hash algorithm for strings and binary data, asynchronous I/O support, and an installer for the pip package manager."

Religeous arguments abound

[EmperorOfCanada]

I have recently started bathing in the waters of Python. What I have realized is that it is a core group within Python who are rightfully proud of their 3.x accomplishment. But they are solidly ignoring the fact that only a tiny percentage of people are using it. The reasons are quite simple people will need 8 modules for their system and 1 barely works with 3.x and the other says something like "mostly works" Well most people aren't willing to depend upon "mostly".

Now module after module is going 3.x but the other problem is that for most people having two pythons on their machine is a pain in the ass. I know there are tools to make this less painful but I can tell you an easy way to make it painless, Don't have two versions.

Then there is this call that you should begin new projects in 3.x; but the problem again is the two versions issue.

What bothers me about all this is that I come from a C++ / PHP world. With C++ I have upgraded countless times over many years and had close to zero problems with my code. I don't even know which compiler XCode is even using right now. With PHP my various upgrades have broken exactly one module and I hear rumours that the next big version of PHP will break one module in my older code. But I don't care as I am replacing my PHP with Python.

Where I am worried is that the core Python people will do something stupid like announce an end of support date for 2.7. The problem there is that it might be easier for some people to install a whole different language to sit alongside Python 2.7 and start playing with that instead of smashing their machine in the teeth and simultaneously installing 3.x.

There is something called multi-process you know

[Viol8]

And python has supported it (at least on unix) virtually since it was first released.

I've never really seen much virtue in multi threading - its useful in a limited number of cases but usually it creates more problems than it solves (compared to multi process) and is usually used by people who don't really know what they're doing. Essentially multi threading takes all the advantages of protected process virtual memory and throws them in the bin.