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Sunsetting Python 2

python.org

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Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#171

Post by appleflaxen »

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.

But it's not commercial, and you had four years of guidance.

I feel like this the python community has been the epitome of class regarding communication during a transition.

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#172

Post by truebosko »

odiroot wrote: post #53
wepower_ico wrote: post #6

I still see companies working with Python2 but I am happy for this announcement - as it will make moving to Python 3 faster.

Job security for us Pythonistas? Porting all this outdated code to Python 3.

Totally. It's like getting a job in dated Java code bases. Tons of cruft to support.

Boring work though

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#174

Post by pelario »

drej wrote: post #159

What surprises me about this is that the documentation for Python 2 does not explicitly say that the language version is about to be unsupported, see e.g. https://docs.python.org/2/library/zipfile.html Contrast this with the Postgres website, which tells me I'm browsing old docs (because Google still offers old links), see e.g. https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/tutorial-window.html Are there plans to add a banner t…

I cannot agree enough.

As a casual python user, it is quite common to stumble in some issue, after somme googling land in a doc page, try my solution, and find it does not work. Then googling after the failed solution, noticing that the previous doc page was describing a Python 2 feature that do not exists (or works different) in Python 3.

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#175

Post by jsjohnst »

edanm wrote: post #122
jedberg wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sounds like Python 3 (Modern Hebrew) vs Python 2 (Biblical Hebrew), no? Anyone who can read Python 3 should barely struggle at all with Python 2. Anyone who can read Python 2 will see a few tweaks in the grammar / functionality (“vocabulary” in this analogy), but mostly straight forward.

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#176

Post by sametmax »

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…

> I'm still surprised that it's taken this long to finally close support

That's because the Python community is too nice.

When Ruby or node broke compat, they just said "move or die". People moved.

When Python broke compat, they gave 7 years. People screamed, cried, complained, sweared it was impossible for them, that life was hard and the PSF was unfair.

They got an extension of 5 more years.

People still complained !

Hell, famous authors resented python 3 for years, refusing publicly to update their book.

On the other hand, the PSF had a very small budget, only few tiny donations and contributions by people or big companies that were saying they couldn't migrate that their lines of code. The same code that were making them a living, from a 25 years old amazing tech given to them for free.

My take on this is that if you are doing an open source project with a lot of volunteer work, don't be too nice. People have a tendency to abuse it. Save yourself trouble, and balance respect with users and convenience for you.

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#178

Post by mbeex »

mbeex wrote: post #87
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…

> There were often clear incentives to upgrade [...] In contrast, Python has become a bit fractured A bit? This is an incentive.

Don't quite unterstand the downvotes. Meanwhile the language and more important the entire infrastructure is affected: python vs. python3 switches pollute virtual environments, deployment, whole systems scripting code, bindings, derived code and more. This is not 'a bit'. Ending this situation is, as already mentioned, a (big) incentive.

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#179

Post by braythwayt »

PeterisP wrote: post #152
hobofan wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You're waiting for other people to do stuff, and for many of them 1-2 years is the timeframe when they are likely to start working on it. From that perspective 1-2 years is not "too short", it's the "we intentionally chose this as the optimal time". That doesn't really depend on when the deadline is; if you postpone the deadline, then they postpone the migration - as pretty much every library did back in 2014 when th…

This x 1000.

“The free libraries we chose to depend upon haven’t migrated.”

Do you have programmers?

“Of course.”

Put them to work.

“We have other priorities.”

Well then. Your choice, your outcome.

Re: Sunsetting Python 2

#180

Post by ensignavenger »

mantap wrote: post #165
shakna wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You couldn't switch to Python 3 until the middle part of this decade unless the stars aligned with your dependencies, the library support wasn't there. And the first releases of Python 3 were glorified betas, the first "usable" version of Python 3 is often considered to be version 3.3 released in 2012.

But you could easily write Python 3 compatible code so that upgrading once your dependacies were ready was easy. You also could have contributed to your dependancies to help them become Python 3 compatible.
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