Live data from Hacker News

Python 2.7 Countdown

pythonclock.org

31–40 of 72 posts

Re: Python 2.7 Countdown

#32
post #22

Guess the community (or a company like RedHat) will have to step in and fork 2.7. There is no way that people who haven't switched, will want to switch, unless absolutely forced to (for example: no security patches).

Like with any other system where some old version just won't go away, the ones who absolutely will not switch to Python 3 will eventually (literally) go extinct. What we can do, as the people who live in the present, is educate programming/python newbies to use the newer/better Python 3, instead of clinging to something that will soon lose official support (for AFAIK good reasons).

>Like with any other system where some old version just won't go away, the ones who absolutely will not switch to Python 3 will eventually (literally) go extinct.

And yet there are tons of lines on COBOL in active use today. What makes you think 2.7 code, which powers tons of businesses, is going anywhere?

Re: Python 2.7 Countdown

#33
My experience over the past year has been that 80% of what I need for new projects is already available on 3 (with the remaining 20% being swappable for other stuff), and that asyncio is a massive (if controversial) boost in performance for some things.

I do wish that some of the gevent/Cython stuff was 100% compatible on occasion, but it's manageable.

That said, 2.7 is still the default in many environments, and we're likely to have to live with it for 12+ years.

Re: Python 2.7 Countdown

#34
post #11
post #9

MacOS still ships with Python 2 as the default python.

Macos still ships an outdated openssl, bash, etc etc... Apple are the definition of “lag” for developer tools.

Except llvm/clang, the future of compilers, was in response to GCC's GPL licensing.

Re: Python 2.7 Countdown

#35
post #17

If there is Python 4, please, make it backwards compatible. Thank you.

http://www.curiousefficiency.org/posts/2014/08/python-4000.h...

It will be backward compatible (unless there is an absolute need to break), but just keep Python 4 out of your head. For now, they predict just 3.10+

Re: Python 2.7 Countdown

#36
post #32
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like with any other system where some old version just won't go away, the ones who absolutely will not switch to Python 3 will eventually (literally) go extinct. What we can do, as the people who live in the present, is educate programming/python newbies to use the newer/better Python 3, instead of clinging to something that will soon lose official support (for AFAIK good reasons).

> Like with any other system where some old version just won't go away, the ones who absolutely will not switch to Python 3 will eventually (literally) go extinct. And yet there are tons of lines on COBOL in active use today. What makes you think 2.7 code, which powers tons of businesses, is going anywhere?

At some point in the future the cost of maintenance vs. cost of rewriting/upgrading will be so much in favor of the latter that businesses will make the (correct) choice to "go with the times" instead of spending an ever increasing amount of money and time on maintaining a code base `x` years old written in a language not officially supported/extended for `y` years, experts for which are increasingly rare (and thus expensive).

Re: Python 2.7 Countdown

#37

Guess the community (or a company like RedHat) will have to step in and fork 2.7. There is no way that people who haven't switched, will want to switch, unless absolutely forced to (for example: no security patches).

> Guess the community (or a company like RedHat) will have to step in and fork 2.7.

Already done: https://github.com/naftaliharris/tauthon/

Re: Python 2.7 Countdown

#38
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macos still ships an outdated openssl, bash, etc etc... Apple are the definition of “lag” for developer tools.

It has to do with licenses. They're shipping the last GPLv2 version of bash for one, the new versions are on GPLv3. I don't get why people bash things when they clearly don't understand the full context (pun intended ;)

You're letting logic and facts get in the way of a chance to complain about something Apple does.

Re: Python 2.7 Countdown

#39
post #15
post #9

MacOS still ships with Python 2 as the default python.

AFAIK, Ubuntu does as well (if you mean that you have to write 'python3' instead of 'python' to execute Python3)

...up until 17.10.

Starting from 17.10, Python3 is the default one and the preinstalled one.

This switch kind of happened unnoticed because Ubuntu switched back to GNOME at that version, but IMHO it is an equally important switch.

With 18.04, we should see that change having much greater effect.

Re: Python 2.7 Countdown

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This old chestnut. Yeah, if there's enough people who are willing to pay for it (time or money), sure, Python 2.7 support will continue. I just hope those same people have used the past years to do calculate the cost of moving to Python 3 vs the cost of Python 2 support. Expecting Python 2 support to be free or even easy is delusional/selfish though.

Pffft. Nice strawman. Who said it would be free or easy? Expecting that everyone will just hop over Python 3 because one group of people doesn't want to maintain Python 2 anymore is delusional.

At some point a CFO will ask why a company is spending $X to use ancient, unhireable versions of their tools when new, free, attractive versions exist. It will be explained - not exactly in these words - that it's basically because their senior devs refuse to learn new stuff. Senior management arguments will ensue. At the end, there will be a plan to save $X with One Simple Trick.

Displaced senior devs will find themselves making nice paychecks at other shops with obsolete codebases, at least until those CFOs start to notice a funny line item in the engineering budget...

Post reply on HN