The otherwise amazing Windows service ninite.com is still offering Python 2.7.16 and is not offering Python 3.
There was a discussion on HN about this a few years ago, but I am curious to see what does ninite.com plan to do now?
Sunsetting Python 2
101–110 of 733 posts
Re: Sunsetting Python 2
#102In 2015, there was no way I could have moved to Python 3. There were too many libraries I depended on that hadn't ported yet. In 2019, I feel pretty confident about using Python 3, having used it exclusively for about 18 months now. For my personal use case at least, this timeline worked out well for me. Hopefully it works out for most everyone. I can't imagine they made this decision without at least some data backi…
Based on your timeline, a four year gap from "not yet ready to migrate" to "we won't fix security vulnerabilities" is very short. Python is an open source project I've used and contributed nothing to, so I don't have the right to be a back seat driver. Were it a commercial project and I was a customer, I would be quite upset.
> Based on your timeline, a four year gap from "not yet ready to migrate" to "we won't fix security vulnerabilities" is very short.
Is it though? Especially since as late as 2014, everyone was under the assumption that in 2015 security support would end. We were already trying to migrate long before that. The five year extension seems pretty reasonable to me.
Re: Sunsetting Python 2
#103While the article is very "matter-of-fact" about the sunset period and what it means to those that still use Python 2, I'm still surprised that it's taken this long to finally close support. I had assumed that their approach would be to fork the language into a new language (call it something like Liasis) and to allow one of the big-name contractors that specialise on Python 2 to take ownership of it.
As an aside, a few weeks ago I interviewed at one of the top 5 investment banks for a software engineering role to maintain one of their main trading systems, written entirely in Python 2. My first question was what their plans were in porting what they called "one of the worlds largest Python 2 code bases," and it was "on the roadmap".
Surely the Python core team are aware that teams like this exist in some of the largest companies in the world, and I assume they've had at least some level of dialogue with companies like this to say "we're super serious this time, we're about to stop support for Python 2", or something along those lines?
Maybe it's a blessing in disguise that I was rejected?
Re: Sunsetting Python 2
#104I long for the day when typing "python" into a shell will bring up a python 3 prompt
Re: Sunsetting Python 2
#105While the article is very "matter-of-fact" about the sunset period and what it means to those that still use Python 2, I'm still surprised that it's taken this long to finally close support. I had assumed that their approach would be to fork the language into a new language (call it something like Liasis) and to allow one of the big-name contractors that specialise on Python 2 to take ownership of it. As an aside, a…
Well, the largest companies in the world don't have to rely on volunteers, they can pay for continued support.
Re: Sunsetting Python 2
#106Is it really necessary to take over the euphemistic newspeak of Google?
Re: Sunsetting Python 2
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not to mention paid FOSS developers at places like RedHat, who want to keep supporting their LTS and enterprise customers... Well RedHat annouced a long time ago that RHEL 8 will drop support for Python 2 [0], so at least it appears they also want to leave Python 2 behind. RHEL7 is already receiving security fixes only [1], which doesn't look like a huge "support" effort to me. Especially, behavior bugs and ports o…
> RHEL7 is already receiving security fixes only [1], which doesn't look like a huge "support" effort to me. Nobody expects new features in python 2.7, so this is basically all the support that people are looking for. RHEL7 will have security maintenance till Jun 2024.
As we see from the python3 switch motivation, the key support people need is support for their favorite libraries.
In that regard, maintenance for python 2.7 would involve backporting security fixes also for popular 2.7 third-party opensource libraries and frameworks even if those libraries themselves have already switched to python 3 only.
Re: Sunsetting Python 2
#108Ugh? Many systems still run COBOL today. Python 2 is likely to be around for a long time. Since the stuff is open source, wouldn't it be nicer if it was possible to fix a bug if needed? Not saying that it should be actively worked on. But maybe one person could be appointed to look over bug fix pull requests (which shouldn't be that frequent these days).
Many systems still run COBOL today The latest official COBOL spec is COBOL 2014 and there are at least two or three competing companies out there that will happily sell you up to date COBOL tools and compilers. So while COBOL may be old, there are still new 'exciting' things happening in the COBOL space.
> there are still new 'exciting' things happening in the COBOL space.
Out of interest, does anyone know if new COBOL specs add any major language features or are they just low-profile security fixes and things.
Re: Sunsetting Python 2
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is incorrect. https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/python3/
You're technically correct in that GAE standard offers python 3, but it's not the same as their python 2 offering. Python 2 is part of the first generation runtimes, python 3 is part of the second generation runtimes. They are not out of the box compatible, even if your python code works on 2 and 3. The first generation runtime included many APIs that are simply just not available in the second gen (you need to build…
This is true for Go as well.
GAE has been a favorite of mine for years, but now they seem hellbent on ruining it, and I don't understand why ='(
(On the plus side, other things are improving and Run looks good)
Re: Sunsetting Python 2
#110In 2015, there was no way I could have moved to Python 3. There were too many libraries I depended on that hadn't ported yet. In 2019, I feel pretty confident about using Python 3, having used it exclusively for about 18 months now. For my personal use case at least, this timeline worked out well for me. Hopefully it works out for most everyone. I can't imagine they made this decision without at least some data backi…
Based on your timeline, a four year gap from "not yet ready to migrate" to "we won't fix security vulnerabilities" is very short. Python is an open source project I've used and contributed nothing to, so I don't have the right to be a back seat driver. Were it a commercial project and I was a customer, I would be quite upset.
In 2014, things were not quite ready so they extended it 6 more years. If you were upset by this you really need to get out of software development.