Python 3.0 to be backwards incompatible

Organisations using the programming language Python will be majorly affected by changes in store for the language over the course of the next twelve months, Linux.conf.au attendees were told this morning.

The Python development community is working towards a new, backwards incompatible version of the language, version 3.0, which is slated for release in early 2009.

"We are going to break pretty much all the code. Pretty much every program will need changes," said Anthony Baxter, release manager for Python and a senior software engineer at Google Australia. Any extension modules, including proprietary vendor ones, will also need to be rewritten.

Python is an open source language which is used by a number of institutions including Google. While not elaborating on how much Python code is in use at Google, Baxter estimated that Python accounts for around 15 percent of Google's code base.