There’s a thread over on the Python list which started a week ago as I write and is still running. The OP titled his post the provocative “I strongly dislike Python 3″ but what it really comes down to is “I strongly dislike print()”. Various people have come in on both sides of this well-worn argument.

Now, I don’t really mind futile discussions, and this clearly is one: Python 3 isn’t going to switch back, no matter how many people weigh in on the print-as-statement side. I’m in that camp myself, and when the matter was first up for discussion I had a to-and-fro with Alex Martelli on the subject which I backed away from fairly quickly. I continue to enjoy and benefit from Python regardless; I contribute to its development very slightly and very rarely; and even were I the most prolific contributor on the planet, I don’t believe that would give me any particular right to dictate design decisions of this sort. You take the rough with the smooth.

I think the side of the discussion which irks me the most is from those who are defending the print-as-function decision. Clearly there are cogent and persuasive reasons why print should be / should have been a function. No-one’s pretending that this was a decision taken randomly and for the sake of change. Or even for the sake of a foolish consistency. But if someone’s working practice involves using print a lot — perhaps in the interpreter rather than in a code editor — then the switch to the function version is clearly a burden. It may be more or less of a burden, but it involves having to do something which you didn’t have to do before. Being told that you should have been using logging or pdb or sys.stdout.write — all of which are valid tools to use in the proper place — doesn’t really make your life any easier.

So while Python 3 is now the default interpreter on my shortcut keys and I’m trying to write new code against 3.2, I still find it a pain to overcome the very long habit of, eg, print ad.find_user ().sAMAccountName. Obviously if Python 1.5.2 had had print () as a function originally, I wouldn’t find is so hard now. ;)

(As an aside I did wonder at first whether the American or some other non-UK keyboards had the brackets in some more convenient spot, but it doesn’t appear so…)