I think programming language design as a having a large random component. New languages pop up every day, and it's really hard to predict which constructs will resonate well with human brains.
Guido was competent, but not nearly as brilliant as, for example, Larry, but Python 2 was dramatically better than Perl. I think this is mostly by chance. Hundreds of new languages come out every year, and by whatever fluke, a few of them really work. Python 2 was that.
In an ecosystem like that, past performance is no indication of future performance. There are very few language designers who did well more than once (Guy Steele is the only one I can think of who wasn't a one-hit-wonder).
So I too felt like Python 3 was more of a step backwards than forwards linguistically. But at this point, it has features I need which Python 2 lacks, so I'm mostly working in Python 3. But it definitely feels (unnecessarily) less clean.
Python's origin story as being a replacement to Perl is so completely out of scope compared to what modern scripting languages are doing it's laughable.
Comments
I think programming language design as a having a large random component. New languages pop up every day, and it's really hard to predict which constructs will resonate well with human brains.
Guido was competent, but not nearly as brilliant as, for example, Larry, but Python 2 was dramatically better than Perl. I think this is mostly by chance. Hundreds of new languages come out every year, and by whatever fluke, a few of them really work. Python 2 was that.
In an ecosystem like that, past performance is no indication of future performance. There are very few language designers who did well more than once (Guy Steele is the only one I can think of who wasn't a one-hit-wonder).
So I too felt like Python 3 was more of a step backwards than forwards linguistically. But at this point, it has features I need which Python 2 lacks, so I'm mostly working in Python 3. But it definitely feels (unnecessarily) less clean.
Python's origin story as being a replacement to Perl is so completely out of scope compared to what modern scripting languages are doing it's laughable.