I know, but the project page says:

    Currently, Pyston targets Python 2.7, only runs on x86_64 platforms, and only has been 
    tested on Ubuntu. Support for more platforms -- along with Python 3 compatibility -- is 
    planned for the future, but this is the initial target due to prioritization constraints.

...but if pypy has taught us anything, surely it's that implementing python3 after you have a working python2 implementation is a seriously huge piece of work.

Especially if you're wholesale copying unicode naive cpython code into your code base.

I'm deeply skeptical python 3 support will ever land for this.

Basically, this is 'modernize python 2 and make it faster'; there's been a lot of talk about no one being willing to pickup and maintain a 2.8 version, but this is it, effectively.

Major backer, major new features.

So, lots of good things here, but there no doubt that its going to be divisive in the community, and I'm not sure I really support that. ...promising py3 support nebulously at some point in the future doesn't fix anything.

tldr; If you ever plan on supporting python3, do it already. Otherwise don't make fake promises.

It seems the main feature to Python3 over 2.x is that it enables you to beg projects to port to Python3. But Python3 people- it's opensource. Isn't that wonderful?

Python3 patches welcome.

Don't be ridiculous.

There's a reason the python 2.x line is 'patch only' by the developers.

Python 3 made fundamental changes to underlying string operations internally for UFT16, which you can easily argue, was a huge mistake, but there you go.

You can't just 'patch python3 support' in. You literally have to rip out anything that uses char * in the code base and replace it with a unicode supported alternative, which is both more complex, and breaks python 2 backwards compatibility.

Pypy is very clever in how they handle this through rpython, which is why they can kind of support both; but randomly dropping cpython 2.x code into the project is completely not forward looking.

I'd be happy with: "We never intend to support python 3, sorry".

If that's the path you want to walk for all the complicated reasons you choose it, fair enough.

If you want Pyston to support Python3, get ta portin'.

I'm sure Dropbox would appreciate the help more than the soapboxing.

Releasing a new Python VM that only targets Python 2 certainly isn't going to help improve that statistic

Dropbox's interest is in getting things done, not pushing Python3.

Then why aren't they using an existing python jit implementation if they want to get things done? Numba or pypy?

I was wondering the same thing

These goals don't have to be mutually exclusive. It would be a bit of a gamble for sure but if they had gone with Python3 they may have nudged the community to switch by the time the engine is ready for production some time in the future.

10% of Python devs is a very large number of people and it'll only grow larger. Python 3.4 is very pleasant to work with and library support is pretty good (I'm working on a py3 code base daily.)

The recent Py2 vs Py3 survey over Christmas suggests that approx. 32% of respondents write in Python 3 (increasing on last year), 68% write in Python 2 (decreasing on last year). Py3 usage is up approx. 12% on last year's survey. For personal projects Py2 and Py3 have roughly equal popularity: http://www.randalolson.com/2015/01/30/python-usage-survey-20...

At monthly PyDataLondon meetings I remind the audience to switch to Py3 (a few do each month) as Py2's sunset date is less than 5 years away now.

Yes, but the "survey" has a terrible bias of people who actually care enough to go and respond to such survey. It also means overrepresentation of python-dev people and so on. There is a very heavy bias towards Python 3 in such a survey (as opposed to say pypi download stats)

Hey fijal. Agreed that the survey has a self-selecting audience, I'd also argue that they're the more forward-thinking folk rather than jobbing background users.

Back in April 2013 (the last time I saw python.org download stats - where did they go?!) I wrote a blog post noting that fresh downloads of Windows Python 3.3 were greater than downloads of Windows Python 2.7, for 3 months running. Windows is useful as Python isn't bundled (unlike e.g. Linux and Mac). I presume this trend has continued but have no firm evidence either way: http://ianozsvald.com/2013/04/15/more-python-3-3-downloads-t...

What do the PyPI stats say?