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Extend Python 2.7 life till 2020

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Re: Extend Python 2.7 life till 2020

#31

Post by Macha »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #12

Oh for god's sake. Kill the damn thing already. PHP 4 to 5 was a massive leap compared to Python 2 to 3, but they actually made that leap!

There was a massive push from the community for PHP5. They had a similar site to the Python3 WOS and large projects such as Wordpress and Drupal announced PHP5 only major updates. I would link it, but the domain has apparently been left expire and replaced with e-cig spam. So here's some link to comments about the announcement: http://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/go-php-5-go , and then a post about its impact and a desire to to the same again for PHP 5.5: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/php-fig/ogp03OHbVJ0

There were a few reasons why they pushed harder with PHP5 however, especially given the tendency of budget web hosts to use old versions of PHP4 with insecure by default configurations (register_globals etc.).

Re: Extend Python 2.7 life till 2020

#32

Post by shadowmint »

SEMW wrote: post #20
shadowmint wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, when they invented new web browsers, the old websites still worked on them ! ...and therein lies the difference.

> See, when they invented new web browsers, the old websites still worked on them! Yeah. But only because they rendered the old websites in various quirks modes[1] that emulated the rendering engines of the old web browsers. Thankfully, web browser developers did not share the analagous mindset to the people saying 'lets stick with python2-compatible semantics forever', or we'd still be writing sites that had to be b…

Whatever. You're splitting hairs.

The sites worked. Quirks mode is now being phased out, but it served its purpose. The analogy Im making is obvious:

Python 3 should have run python 2 code and slowly rolled old semantics into depreciation; this whole mess could never have existed.

Its not as simple as 'just port your code and run python3'

Re: Extend Python 2.7 life till 2020

#33

Post by yukichan »

huxley wrote: post #7
borplk wrote: post #2

Damn. I hope my grandchildren see the day when Python 3 is commonplace.

Since it's only bug & security fixes for Python 2.7.x from this point on, the momentum to python 3.x will pick up considerably. Python 3 compatibility far outnumbers incompatible packages now: http://python3wos.appspot.com

The disaster that is unicode in Python 2.7.x is enough for me to use Python 3 for anything I do in the future. And as you said there are enough compatible packages now to make this doable so yay for Python 3, and I say that as a former Python 3 skeptic.

Re: Extend Python 2.7 life till 2020

#34

Post by a1a »

chimeracoder wrote: post #11

This is really disappointing to see - I fear that it will slow adoption of Python 3 even further, when it was just reaching a tipping point[0]. When I first learned Python, I learned Python 3 first because it was newer, and I figured everyone would be using it soon enough. Little did I know that Python 2 would continue to be supported for over ten years after that! Some people make a big deal about figuring out "whic…

On the other hand, if you are comfortable with Python 2, it will do the job, and you know it will be supported for a foreseeable future, why bother learning Python 3?

I assume there is a good answer for switching to Python 3, but I honestly don't know (haven't bothered to do any research though).

Harshly put: I care about getting my python script working as soon as possible and for a foreseeable future - I couldn't care less for the Python language and it's future.

Re: Extend Python 2.7 life till 2020

#35

Post by muyuu »

danohuiginn wrote: post #26
trentlott wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used 2.* for about 10 years, quite happily. If I switch to anything, I'll probably switch to Go. (I originally typed 2.7, which is nonsense.)

that's quite an achievement, considering it was only released 4 years ago!

Well, the 2.x branch has been rather gracefully backwards compatible for many years. Even the jump from 1.x to 2.x was largely "assisted".

Personally, for me switching to 3 is a massive hindrance and probably I'll never do it. For the kind of things I use Python, the changes are extremely significant and it actually seems to me like a step backwards. It may be an improvement in other respects, though. I don't know.

Re: Extend Python 2.7 life till 2020

#36

Post by oinksoft »

huxley wrote: post #7
borplk wrote: post #2

Damn. I hope my grandchildren see the day when Python 3 is commonplace.

Since it's only bug & security fixes for Python 2.7.x from this point on, the momentum to python 3.x will pick up considerably. Python 3 compatibility far outnumbers incompatible packages now: http://python3wos.appspot.com

> the momentum to python 3.x will pick up considerably.

People won't leave Python 2.7 for Python 3.x, they'll go to other languages. Python has no right to its users.

Re: Extend Python 2.7 life till 2020

#37

Post by jiggy2011 »

Macha wrote: post #28
jiggy2011 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PHP5 was almost completely backwards compatible with PHP4, Python 3 has much larger changes.

Just the entire OOP system changed. However, nobody noticed because nobody used the OO features in PHP4.

IIRC PHP5 mostly added features to the OOP system so old code would still work even if it was suboptimal.

Re: Extend Python 2.7 life till 2020

#39

Post by numbsafari »

jlebrech wrote: post #13
chimeracoder wrote: post #11

This is really disappointing to see - I fear that it will slow adoption of Python 3 even further, when it was just reaching a tipping point[0]. When I first learned Python, I learned Python 3 first because it was newer, and I figured everyone would be using it soon enough. Little did I know that Python 2 would continue to be supported for over ten years after that! Some people make a big deal about figuring out "whic…

Isn't this HACKER news, just hack something popular in python 3. all we need it anything written from scratch to be written in python 3.

I realize you are probably getting down voted because of the way that you wrote what you wrote.

But, I have to say, that during the keynote by Guido this morning, this was more-or-less the sentiment that I was left with, but with a #positivepython-twist.

Listening to Guido, I left with the inspiration to try and help this community make that migration.

I hope that, by this time next year, I can have made some contribution to the community that will help people such as the GP be in a position to use "the latest and greatest".

Here's the list, let's make it green:

https://python3wos.appspot.com

Re: Extend Python 2.7 life till 2020

#40

Post by makmanalp »

I see many comments talking about how this will slow down the migration process. But I don't think the situation is that bad.

Most of the py3 wall of superpowers is now green (https://python3wos.appspot.com/) with boto, mysql-python, nltk, python-openid being some of the rare few in terms of not having great py3 alternatives. And most of these have ports on the way already.

So one interesting effect of this is that now that there is some critical mass and people are starting new projects in python3, there is now pressure on package maintainers to have py3 ports. So it's users dragging the packages forward now rather than the packages dragging the users backwards.

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