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Why I don't like Python 3

Why I don't like Python 3


Python 3 sucks.  I hate that they've made changes so that aren't backwards-compatible.  You can't run many Python 2 scripts using the Python 3 interpreter.  It's almost like they've gone out of their way to piss off developers.

Here are some specific reasons why I hate Python 3:


  1. My biggest gripe: print is a function rather than a statement now.  I'm not saying it's not a good idea for print to be a function but why fuck with existing scripts?  Just keep the print statement as-is and create a new function with a distinct name.
  2. Data read from files comes back as bytes and you have to encode them.  More on this later but I think this is nonsense.
  3. You can't write a simple string to a file opened for binary.  Yes, I know about string.encode() but my point is I don't like having to use it.
  4. You can't turn off buffering when you open a text file for writing: open('foo', 'w', 0) throws can't have unbuffered text I/O!  Bullshit!  Sure, you can use 'wb' but why should we have to do that?
  5. A style like 0o100 is now required for octal (which I was never a big fan of) and 0100 is an error! What the hell!!

Comments

  1. In this brave new world of Python 3, I've gotten used to it and have put Python 2 in the past. I don't mind the print problem so much anymore but binary/text is often still challenging.

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