Python 2 will store Unicode as either UCS-16 or UCS-32, depending on how it was compiled. The horrible monstrosity that is the default "string" (those are scare quotes; I know how the formatting on here works) in Python 2 is not Unicode, so it obviously doesn't use UCS-16 or UCS-32.

UCS-4 is UTF-32 (or, to be pedantic, a superset), whereas UCS-2 is the fixed-width predecessor of UTF-16.

There's no such thing as UCS-16 or UCS-32.

TL;DR Write it in Rust, export via FFI, bind from Python via cffi.

The long version is: go watch this video from PyCon that will answer this question and probably others https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CwJ0MH-4MA

That video and a similar talk I've given at Ruby conferences inspired me to make a chapter for the book: http://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/book/rust-inside-other-langu...

Somebody has to build the containers and/or images, and it's on them to make that an automated, repeatable process.

Please tell me those discussions are on the mailing list.

They're actually RFCs. And the results are in a repository. I'm on mobile or I'd link you. But they generally codify already-existing style, rather than mandating it, although sometimes we just need a decision to tear down a bikeshed...

I was on the rust mailing list for a little while about a year ago. Around that time there was discussion of this exact subject. Most of the discussion was around exactly how to break parameters beyond a certain length and so forth, but it was there.

If you honestly believe that all you have to do is stand up a bunch of instances of Mongo/Cassandra/whatever and you instantly get acceptable HA, then you need to read the [Jepsen series](https://aphyr.com/tags/jepsen)

It depends on what you consider "acceptable HA". There are many instances where I'm not trying to protect from a network partition (single data center, monitored batch data loads, etc) and don't have a requirement for that level of tolerance. However, you're right in that it's important to know that nearly every distributed system has edge cases where things might not appear as you thought. Elasticsearch has a section on their Website detailing their resiliency efforts. I wish every company was as transparent about what they're doing on that front so we can all plan and consider expectations better.

Setting up Mongo/Cassandra for HA is still several orders of magnitude less work than with PostgreSQL.

And there are plenty of options for dealing with the issues presented in those series.

Elasticsearch can run with Zookeeper. Zookeeper is pretty solid. Also, MSSQL with AlwaysOn is something which seems very robust too.

Having used them both a fair bit (though not to write novels, like some of the people on here): Markdown source is prettier to look at. This might seem minor, but it's the primary goal of Markdown. If I'm writing something highly technical, I prefer RST; if I'm writing something closer to plain English, I prefer Markdown.

I use Eclipse (now that I no longer have an IntelliJ license) for doing heavy-duty Java, but if I can get away with it, I prefer to do things in MacVim. Eclipse is just too clunky feeling when I want to do simple text editing tasks; it totally throws me out of my flow. That's why I'm on HN right now, as a matter of fact. So clearly, I am not an unbiased observer. That said: have you tried Pathogen/Vundle? Vim plugin management these days is light-years better than the equivalent Eclipse nightmare (I've given up on about half my Eclipse plugins as things constantly break).

It's PHP. They obviously wanted a broken language. Now the devs are taking that away from them.

I'm pretty sure it hoses Norton's "security" software, too. Of course, if you can't handle documented file system options, I don't trust you to detect exploits….

Jenkins.