"Wall of Shame," sounds harsh. However I don't think it's entirely inappropriate. The premise is that it has been two years since py3k has been release and the community has little to show for it. One would think two whole years would be enough time to port a library. Especially if most of the fundamental challenges of doing so are matters of syntax (not in all cases I'm sure) and changing some names.
OTOH, maybe the community still refuses to switch? Maybe py3k is viewed as "that bad," that no one wants to bother with it?
FWIW, py3k is quite fast now and the language "enhancements" do make a significant difference. I actually quite like it now that my primary OS, Arch Linux, gave me the boot and made py3 the default interpreter. Many of my projects are still in py2.7, but I have been working on converting them. Sometimes I get lucky and all I need to do is run 2to3!
"Maybe py3k is viewed as "that bad," that no one wants to bother with it?"
I don't think anyone's viewing it that way. A lot of people want to switch and many are, but there's the non-zero cost of porting and also the generally low demand. No one wants to spend 3 days of initial work on a port that no one currently wants, then tack on the continued maintenance of two branches (or a single code base that works with both and requires twice the testing).
Part of the reason we have the PSF Sprints funding is to solve that problem. A group of 6-7 developers in Cape Town is taking advantage of the funding in early March and plans to complete more of the py3k port of matplotlib. matplotlib is a great one to work on in terms of community impact since it usually ranks highly in any poll of 3.x blockers.
Actually, my LUG is also considering doing some sprints. I'm more inclined to join them after using py3 and wishing there was more support for it (and feeling bad about my own laziness in porting my own stuff). The sprints are a great idea and we're quite lucky to have such support!
Guido should have stuck with his original plan - keep updating python 2.X till it's converged to python 3.
Deprecate print statements, warn if you don't import division from __future__, and so on. Maybe even leave a 2.X compatibility mode: `from __past__ import print_statement`.
I guess unicode is a sticky point though. I really don't know what can be done about except rant about how hard unicode is.
I am sure Guido realized one thing. Where would he get the resources to keep updating and do P3. I think he chose the right path. 5 year plan (half way there) to move everything to P3. That gives them a good time-frame to get things in P3 solid and stable (however you want to apply those terms).
OTOH, maybe the community still refuses to switch? Maybe py3k is viewed as "that bad," that no one wants to bother with it?
FWIW, py3k is quite fast now and the language "enhancements" do make a significant difference. I actually quite like it now that my primary OS, Arch Linux, gave me the boot and made py3 the default interpreter. Many of my projects are still in py2.7, but I have been working on converting them. Sometimes I get lucky and all I need to do is run 2to3!