Re: flare and SIAI

From: Gordon Worley (redbird@rbisland.cx)
Date: Wed Aug 01 2001 - 07:57:12 MDT


At 6:13 PM -0700 7/30/01, James Higgins wrote:
>At 06:36 PM 7/30/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>>At 2:03 PM -0700 7/30/01, James Higgins wrote:
>>>Right, and I seem to remember someone on this list mentioning that
>>>Python has been in development 15 years. And I know Perl has been
>>>around a long time as well.
>>
>>Python is just 11 years old, but it's so good I can understand your
>>confusion in thinking it had been 15. ;-)
>
>Wow! 11 years and they are only on version 2.1! There must have
>either been a huge amount of work between 1.0 and 2.0, or 1.0 was
>just so darn perfect that it didn't need that much more. Anyone
>know where I can find the version history for Python?

Well, what it comes down to is that Python has used conservative
version numbers. This is something that Guido did. I've only used
Python heavily since version 1.4 (I played with 1.3 a few times), but
the version history goes something like this:

* 0 - 1.6 - These releases, if I recall correctly, each made
improvements on the last, but nothing to warrant a big version number
change. There was one release where lots of stuff change how
everything worked underneath (was it 1.3?) that probably would have
sent things 2.0 if Larry had been taking care of version numbers.

* 2.0 - now - Still mostly small changes.

* Python 3000 - This is to be the all new Python that probably won't
be backwards compatible but take all the experience of the years of
Python development to make a really awesome language. No ETA.

And there you have it. The version numbers were kept small in the
start because Py3k was originally going to be Python 2.0, but as
Python moved around in 2000 marketing pressures made 1.7 be 2.0
(Guido has stated he doesn't care about version numbers, so he was
fine with the change).

If it helps, use this formula to get something along the lines of
Perl like version numbers from Python version numbers:

(py_ver - 1) * 10

So, for example, 1.5.2 becomes 5.2. Alas, this doesn't really work
at the jump to 2.0, since that should be 1.7. Oh well.

Now, we're digressing too much, but I thought that would be useful in
this thread.

-- 
Gordon Worley                     `When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty
http://www.rbisland.cx/            said, `it means just what I choose
redbird@rbisland.cx                it to mean--neither more nor less.'
PGP:  0xBBD3B003                                  --Lewis Carroll


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