Python 3.3.0 Released

An anonymous reader writes "After just over a month of release candidates, the final version of Python 3.3 launched today. This version includes new syntax, including the yield from expression for generator delegation; new library modules, including fault handler (for debugging crashes), ipaddress, and lzma (for data compression using the XZ/LZMA algorithm); a reworked OS and I/O exception hierarchy; the venv module for programmatic access to Python virtual environments; and a host of API changes. The full list of features and the change log are both available."

Re:Python 3 and its use

[CastrTroy]

Yeah, if you look at all the old programs, you can always tell what they do. Excel, Access, Gimp, Firefox, Quarkxpress. Sure there's some good names out there like Photoshop, Word, Internet Explorer, WordPerfect and CorelDraw!, but I don't think it was ever the case where the function of most programs could be identified by their name. All the obvious names get taken early on, and you're left with having to give your program a meaningless name so that you don't sound like a copycat, and so you can distinguish your program from all the others out there.

Weak third-party library support

[Animats]

The trouble with Python 3 is that nobody took responsibility for converting the third-party libraries. Many major libraries became abandonware in that transition. Rather than converting the old ones, in some cases, new incompatible libraries were developed. So not only do you have to convert your code from Python 2 to 3 (for which there is a tool to help), you have to change your code to use new libraries. Python doesn't have enough market share that major projects like MySQL and OpenSSL maintain the Python bindings for their project. At one point, the Python binding for OpenSSL was maintained by a World of Warcraft guild.

Perl has CPAN, which actually hosts library source and has some Q/A functions. Python just has PyPi (formerly "Cheese Shop"), which is just a directory of links.

This is Python's real problem. Python's Little Tin God For Life doesn't want the headaches of managing library maintenance. But he's not willing to let go and turn control over to an organization that can manage the grunt work of getting all the parts to work together. That's also why there is no Python ISO standard, and why none of the implementations other than CPython support 3.x.