/dev/chat

Though the mods in TeX SE don't have much to do. TeX users are a pretty well behaved lot. Also the SuperUser chat room tends to be quite active. And Cooking (The Trying Pan) sometimes. I used to hang out in both of those from time to time.

TeX I'm generally in as a regular thing.

Andras Deak

SU probably has Journeyman Geek who is very active

Faheem Mitha

@AndrasDeak He used to be there, yes.

Oh and the DBA chat room is also reasonably active. Lots of shop talk. But reasonably friendly and helpful, which is always a good thing.

I hope Python in Debian defaults to 3 soon. It's hard to remember to keep typing 3.

Andras Deak

It won't, won't it?

python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394

> The python command was preferred for code compatible with both Python 2 and 3 (since it was available on all systems, even those that already aliased it to Python 3).
The python command should always invoke Python 2 (to prevent hard-to-diagnose errors when Python 2 code is run on Python 3).
The python2 and python3 commands should be available to specify the version explicitly.

Arch switched before this came out so now there's lots of confusion :(

Faheem Mitha

@AndrasDeak I think python in Debian will eventually default to 3.

But I'm not sure when it will happen. Possibly next release.

Andras Deak

I see

Faheem Mitha

11:35 AM

The python2 and python3 commands will still remain available.

Andras Deak

@FaheemMitha I'm sure that won't be painful at all :P

Faheem Mitha

Well, python2 will go when Python 2 does.

@AndrasDeak Well, Debian has been doing that transition for a while now.

As has every significant Python project. Mercurial had quite a lot of trouble with it, I think. But they're mostly done now.

See for example gregoryszorc.com/blog/2020/01/13/…

> I believe Python's choices represent a terrific example of what not to do when managing a large project or ecosystem.

Andras Deak

@FaheemMitha python 2 is already gone ;)

Faheem Mitha

@AndrasDeak In mean from Debian. And lots of people use it still.

But I think most big projects have transitioned, or are completing their transition. Mercurial, for example, does not default to 3 yet.

Andras Deak

11:56 AM

how does Hg relate to python executables?

Faheem Mitha

12:12 PM

@AndrasDeak Mercurial is written in Python, and the hg command is a Python script.

Most of Mercurial is a library, which gets called by the script.

At the top of /usr/bin/hg is:

#! /usr/bin/python2

At least on Unix-like systems.

The Mercurial-specific bit is at the bottom, and looks like

from mercurial import dispatch

dispatch.run()

Andras Deak

12:25 PM

@FaheemMitha I knew the former, but not the latter. Thanks.

Faheem Mitha

12:37 PM

@AndrasDeak You're welcome. Are you a Mercurial user?

Andras Deak

Nope. Git for the win ;)

Faheem Mitha

@AndrasDeak Ugh.

Andras Deak

12:57 PM

@FaheemMitha do you have bad experience with git?

Faheem Mitha

@AndrasDeak Not as such. Just not a big fan. It's UI is fairly awful. But I don't have a problem with it. After all, it's still free software.

I just think there is an unfortunate monoculture around it now.

Andras Deak

Monoculture, probably. UI is weird and inconsistent at times :) But I love the way it works.

Faheem Mitha

@AndrasDeak You might like Mercurial better. At least the UI is better. And the feature set too, probably. Evolve is probably the current major advantage over the competition.

Which these days is just Git, I suppose.

Andras Deak

1:17 PM

Everything I see and need uses git and I like git, so I'm fine :)

ilkkachu

3:59 PM

I had this problem with git originally. I just couldn't "get" it. Then I looked at Mercurial, saw what probably was basically the same concepts, but all was just... clearer. :D

Though since everything uses git, that's what I've then used, doesn't seem to be much of a problem any more, and I can't remember the details of that original confusion.

Faheem Mitha

@ilkkachu Git isn't hard to understand, it just has a poorly designed UI.

But it works, which I suppose is the most important thing.

Still, usability is important. I've hardly ever used it, but I find it irritating when I do.

Though it's certainly better than if a proprietary version control system was dominant. Such situations are not unknown, and never lead to anything good.

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