Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sunsetting Python 2

python.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 733 posts

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#141

Post by Fradow »

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…

The tone is excessive and over-the-top because it's the last of numerous documents over the years saying essentialy the same thing. And yeah, they are probably sick of supporting Python 2 because a few vocal users still complain a decade after the writing is on the wall.

There are tons of incentives to upgrade, but unfortunately very few to none can be considered killer features, and thus are harder to show off in a concise reminder about the sunset.

You have to give it a try and actually use Python 3 features to realize how much this improves your life as a developer.

Python 3 isn't perfect, but especially with later versions, it's a hell of an improvement over Python 2.

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#142

Post by sweettea »

Sad to see them forging ahead on their plans to drop Python 2, and it would have been nice of them to point out that other volunteers will provide security fixes for Python 2 compatible runtimes.

I've switched to Tauthon [1] for over a year now and have been quite pleased. Consider the switch yourself rather than rewriting your code.

[1] https://github.com/naftaliharris/tauthon

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#143

Post by Tom4hawk »

anilakar wrote: post #126

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.

I think you are in a startup echo chamber/bubble. Most of the world doesn't have any negative connotations with that word. You cannot cater to everyone...

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#144

Post by jiffyjeff »

mehrdadn wrote: post #132
lutoma wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one wants that Why would you write a statement that is so demonstrably false?

Probably because it's hyperbole to get a point across.

I don't know if the author was intending to be hyperbolic -- I for one prefer Python 2's print. I would've preferred keeping print the way it was and using a new keyword for the new functionality.

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#145

Post by Wowfunhappy »

MR4D wrote: post #137
reitzensteinm wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was longer than Apple’s move to 64 bit apps on the iPhone. Actually, depending on what action you pin dates to, it was twice as long. One other thing - you can’t run non-64 bit apps anymore. You can still run Python 2.

That's a pretty low bar. I still think that move by Apple was pretty terrible. Especially given that it's 100% impossible to downgrade iOS (your last point).

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#146

Post by EnderMB »

Scarblac wrote: post #105
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…

Well, the largest companies in the world don't have to rely on volunteers, they can pay for continued support.

I've never worked for a company of that scale, so I don't know how hard it'll be to find legacy developers, but I imagine it'll take at least several years to port a public-facing system to Python 3, if they were to start now.

If they start in the next few years, I imagine it'll be much harder to find ready and willing Python 2 developers with the experience to navigate such a big code-base? They could hire consultants, but I imagine the future hiring cost will also be astronomical.

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#147

Post by hobofan »

PeterisP wrote: post #99
reitzensteinm wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The thing is, a four year gap is very large from the perspective of "should we drop everything else and prioritize porting our library to python3 right now". If the deadline wasn't 2020 but 2024, then you wouldn't get more time, simply we'd be at "not yet ready to migrate" state right now, as major libraries would not have switched yet.

> porting our library

Library, as is most open source libraries out there, sure.

For a big company-internal Python codebase that also has to wait for all the major libraries to migrate first, that time frame can quickly shrink to 1-2 years, which is very little.

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#148

Post by xenator »

m0zg wrote: post #114

Meanwhile, TensorFlow build _still_ defaults to Python2. :-)

May be I didn’t noticed it. Pretty comfortable use it on python3 in my environment. So, from my point of view, authors of the TensorFlow just need to update documentation to complete transition.

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#149

Post by thefabsta »

A popular library that has unfortunately not transitioned to Python 3 yet is rospy (which is part of the larger ROS ecosystem for robotics). It is the last framework that prevents me to fully embrace Python 3 for my everyday work. I sincerely hope the robotics community will eventually port rospy (and other ROS-related libraries) to Python 3.

I am, however, very happy to see that ROS2 (the next iteration of ROS) uses Python 3 by default.

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#150

Post by jacquesm »

vkazanov wrote: post #73
brobdingnagians wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tongue in cheek comment; C was released 47 years ago and is still supported... but then again, that shows a very different philosophy between system languages and scripting languages.

Not really. :-) ANSI C is very different to the whole pre-ANSI zoo of C-like languages. Most of the code I saw from that age would never compile on modern post-ANSI compilers.

Nonsense. I just compiled a pretty large project from the stone age using a modern day compiler. It required a few lines of change in all to make it compile and it ran the first time it compiled.

C has many warts and design errors but they got the portability bit down quite well, the biggest problems you will run into are assumptions by programmers rarely assumptions by the designers of the language. One major thing lots of people tripped up over was endianness (sp?).

Post reply on HN