October 14, 2007

Python 3.X Switch Poll Result

So, I Saw This Poll Widget on Blogger ...
As Seth Godin reminds us, anyone who treats these figures as any kind of indication of what might exist or happen in reality is treating them as way too significant, so I am publishing them as a graphic to make them less easy to copy and paste in a way that might come to Google's (the search engine's) attention.

As far as the results go, I think it's interesting that about a third of voters are ready to switch (which, remember, does not mean porting existing products, necessarily) and the biggest group has no current plans (which in effect you don't if it isn't going to happen in the next three years). I think this will be reassuring to the developers, because I don't believe 2.x will stop being the recommended release even after 3.0.0's initial release. [David Goodger kindly pointed out I originally negated the proposition of this sentence in error].

It will be helpful for 3.0 to have a relatively populous user base, though. These people can blaze the trail (and another Seth Godin post has something to say about that, too). There will be a lot of crossover between the languages by backporting features into 2.6 et seq, so porting from 2.6 or maybe 2.7 to 3.1 or 3.2 after a year or two's experience with the new features is likely to be a viable option, I believe.

Various cautions were raised on mailing lists and by email about the limited nature of the choices, lack of information about when Python 3.0 goes live and so on, along with some individual votes for options not listed. Thanks for those; once a vote has been cast the poll cannot be edited, though, and I did not want to throw away votes already cast. Most cautions were reasonable and could have improved the poll. Despite its inherently unscientific nature it's does at least show what some people are thinking.

Thanks To All Voters
Seth Godin is right about polls being traffic stunts too (else why would Blogger offer them?), though I suspect many of those voting will have been what regulars this blog has. If the poll brought you to "... Magic" for the first time, welcome. If it didn't, welcome back!

I try to make it a dialog, but often end up talking to myself. A bit like the rest of life, really.

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