Python 3.2 Released 164
digitalderbs writes "Python 3.2 was released on Feb 20th 2011 with many new improvements. New features include many useful updates to the unittest module, a stable ABI for extensions, pyc repository directories, improvements to the email and ssl modules and many others. This also marks the first release in the 3000-series that is no longer backported to the 2.0-series."
Goodbye, Python 2 (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know of a major Python library that isn't upgrading to Py3 - and this release marks the tipping point where we wave goodbye to the aging 2.x codebase.
PEP-3003 [python.org], the moratorium to changes to the language to allow alternative Python implementations to catch up, only applies up to the 3.2 series so we're going to continue moving forward from here. Nobody's forcing Python 2 users to upgrade their code, but there's many advantages and ever decreases hurdles to doing so.
Don't fear change, this change is good and necessary for the advancement of the language.
Unnecessary complexity (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't understand how this Py3k praising always gets such good moderation on /.
Python 3 has left the original focus of the language as something simple and easy to use. All the changes are towards a MORE COMPLEX language, I see no change that makes it simpler to use, no change that requires less code than the former version.
Py3k is moving in the direction of Java, where nothing can be done without typing a hundred lines of code. An example from the Python documentation:
17.1.3.1. Replacing /bin/sh shell backquote
output=`mycmd myarg`
==>
output = Popen(["mycmd", "myarg"], stdout=PIPE).communicate()[0]
I cannot see how would anyone call this an "improvement"... Oh, sure, it gives me more options, more control, but if I had wanted to finely tune the innards of the program I would have used C++.