The First Django Website Run On Python 3

The top post on Hacker News this morning is about a Django (1.5 development branch) site running on Python 3. Why is a Django site running on Python 3 newsworthy? Because while Django 1.5 is tested and supported against Python 2.6 and Python 2.7 (dropping support for Python 2.5 found in Django 1.4), Python 3 compatibility is a new feature.

Python 3 breaks backwards compatibility with Python 2 to remove the cruft from years of Python 1 & 2 development syntax. Python 3 is a better language. But until the vast majority of libraries and frameworks support or move exclusively to Python 3, Python 2 will continue to be used. Django in particular is an important project because it is the most widely used Python framework.

Python 3 is supported by Django through the six compatibility layer. It will be interesting to see how many bugs in advanced Django features come up throughout the development cycle and whether Python 3 is officially supported (the current plan) or whether there is a backtrack to unofficial support for this release to prevent too much of a delay in releasing version 1.5.