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Sunsetting Python 2

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Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#121

Post by jl6 »

choppaface wrote: post #80

"What will happen if I do not upgrade by January 1st, 2020?" "You will lose chances to use good tools because they will only run on Python 3, you will slow down people who depend on you and work with you." The tone in this document is excessive and over-the-top. If the author spent half the document demonstrating (with examples) why Python3 is so great, it might actually be useful and get people upgrading like right…

Did we read the same document? It seems fine and a perfectly normal explanation of what’s going on and why, like any software with a defined lifecycle would have.

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#122

Post by edanm »

jedberg wrote: post #69
brnt wrote: post #64

Every now and then a language like no other pops up: it's use is unusual and unusually long. Various biblical languages come to mind: Latin, Church Slavonic, Hebrew at one point. These languages are feature complete, and the fact that they didn't change was their main appeal. I've always thought Python 2 might be headed for the languages. Which is fine, it's great to have a programming equivalent of Latin.

Latin is getting new words all the time. The Vatican is the official maintainer. Sometimes it gets grammar tweaks too. Hebrew was completely replaced with modern Hebrew and gets new changes constantly.

> Hebrew was completely replaced with modern Hebrew and gets new changes constantly.

Just to clarify further, modern Hebrew is mostly backwards compatible with biblical Hebrew, it's not an entirely new language. It was mostly updated in terms of vocabulary that was necessary for the modern era, plus some spelling/grammar changes.

Modern Hebrew speakers are able to read biblical Hebrew almost completely, though there are some differences (think of English speakers reading Shakespeare - though even less difference than that.)

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#123

Post by toyg »

EnderMB wrote: post #103

While 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…

You can count your blessings. I think I know what company you’re talking about, and as far as I know they have no inclination to ever port anything. It’s the sort of company with enough money to pay to have their own runtime, simply because it’s organisationally easier to throw money at “maintenance” once established, than it is to do a big port or rewrite. Legacy support is a well-paying job, if depressing.

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#124

Post by shakna »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #95
jedberg wrote: post #62

In 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.

Python 2's EOL was first announced in 2008, it was extended in 2014. That's more than a decade of forewarning that this was coming down the line. A decade of Python2 receiving security fixes.

Were I a commercial customer, and had been told to switch to the new version ten years ago, then it's on me if I still have started the migration yet.

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#125

Post by icebraining »

adamhepner wrote: post #31

Great stuff. But what about alternative python interpreters that have been lagging behind? Jython is 2.7.1 and IronPython is 2.7.9

For the JVM, there has been some work on new interpreters for Python 3 based on GraalVM. Unfortunately none seem production-ready at the moment.

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#126

Post by anilakar »

I wish Python Software Foundation had worded their announcement differently – in the SW development context, even a plain "support for this version ends on dd.mm.yyyy" sounds more professional and friendly than the word "sunsetting" that has just too many negative connotations nowadays. From past experience it usually means that a startup is pulling the plug or has outright gone bankrupt.

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#127

Post by j-pb »

carlmr wrote: post #85
j-pb wrote: post #57

And now remind yourself that there are self driving cars out there and autonomous digging equipment that is based on ROS, which doesn't have any plan or intent to move to python 3. Fun stuff...

Is ROS used in production for this? I've only seen it used for prototyping.

Yeah, Built Robotics[1] apparently does, at least according to their hiring page.

And I think Audi is using it for their self driving cars...

https://www.builtrobotics.com/

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#128

Post by toyg »

adamhepner wrote: post #31

Great stuff. But what about alternative python interpreters that have been lagging behind? Jython is 2.7.1 and IronPython is 2.7.9

They are effectively both dead or moribund. Jython has had a py3 experimental branch for ages but the entire project is basically starved of money and effort.

To be honest, the whole “Python on other runtimes” movement, as a concept, is more or less over. It’s just too much effort for too little reward, now that CPython has good libraries for pretty much anything you can think of.

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#129

Post by paulific »

alexmlamb wrote: post #82
WilliamEdward wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anyone like python2 so much better than python3 that they would want to fork it into its own language? The two languages are already incredibly similar and python3 has a much larger active community.

It's having to write the parenthesis after print. No one wants that and it's been by far the largest complaint the community has about python3.

Yup. By no means a developer, but I Python was the first programming language I learned and I always felt it was my native language. I was happy to stick around with 2.7 for as long as it was there, but I guess this is the motivation I needed to learn Ruby or Haskell. :-(

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#130

Post by rglullis »

leowoo91 wrote: post #44

It's always good to see such big movements but as a truly peaceful p2 dev, I'm not even considering to upgrade my projects unless it'd cost me labor not to upgrade.

Given that you said "projects", why don't you try an experiment of porting one of the smaller projects and have and evaluate how much of a hassle it is? I am willing to bet you will figure out is not that complicated at all.
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