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

Why Is the Migration to Python 3 Taking So Long?

stackoverflow.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 355 posts

Re: Why Is the Migration to Python 3 Taking So Long?

#121

Post by JohnFen »

SignalsFromBob wrote: post #88
semiotagonal wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many people feel that migrating to Python3 would have been worth doing in the absence of being forced to do so. Dropbox invested three years of work, actually hired Python's creator, and are still not done. What are they getting out of it that they wouldn't have gotten if Python2 simply had been maintained?

I suspect that someone, or a group of people, will step up to unofficially maintain Python 2 for the foreseeable future. It's clear that there are a lot of people using it that either can't easily migrate or are unwilling to do so for the various reasons already discussed in this thread.

If I encounter Python 2 bugs that matter to me, I can and will fix them myself if needed, and submit or otherwise publish the change.

I'm quite certain I'm not the only one.

Re: Why Is the Migration to Python 3 Taking So Long?

#122

Post by gowld »

enragedcacti wrote: post #42
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I myself, speaking for my self and only my self find that, in regards to myself, the redundant self keyword, in my self's opinion, is somewhat selfish and easy for my self to accidentally omit. Self.

I personally really like the self keyword after spending some time reading code in Java where `this` is optional. Having to reference self makes it more clear where data is coming from and makes navigating an unfamiliar code base much easier. I'm a fan of forcing devs to acknowledge when they are accessing or manipulating mutable object state. Separate from that, I think that would be a much bigger breaking change th…

Java fields are declared in the same lexical scope as their use sites (except for inherited fields, but Python has the same magic in that case.)

Re: Why Is the Migration to Python 3 Taking So Long?

#123

Post by takeda »

mxcrossb wrote: post #33
downerending wrote: post #8

Because there's been not enough carrot and too much stick. The only real killer feature of Python3 is the async programming model. Unfortunately, the standard library version is numbingly complex. (Curio is far easier to follow, but doesn't appear to have a future.) On the down side, switching to Unicode strings is a major hurdle. It mostly "just works", but when it doesn't, it can be difficult to see what's going on…

On the topic of not enough carrot, I’m curious how impactful the end of support for python2 will be. How many programs stuck in python2 are encountering bugs in the runtime?

Python itself won't be as much affected, what will affect you most are your dependencies. Imagine using a library and running in some kind of bug. You check newer version, looks like that bug was fixed, but the library now only works on python 3.6+. What will you do?

Re: Why Is the Migration to Python 3 Taking So Long?

#124

Post by epx »

downerending wrote: post #8

Because there's been not enough carrot and too much stick. The only real killer feature of Python3 is the async programming model. Unfortunately, the standard library version is numbingly complex. (Curio is far easier to follow, but doesn't appear to have a future.) On the down side, switching to Unicode strings is a major hurdle. It mostly "just works", but when it doesn't, it can be difficult to see what's going on…

For me the major gain in Py3 is exactly the sane handling of strings, that fixes the major flaw of Py2: weaking the String type to make the migration to UnicodeStrings "easy".

Re: Why Is the Migration to Python 3 Taking So Long?

#125

Post by at_a_remove »

In my current job, I can point out something that might be a contributing factor:

I work in an industry where there is basically one 800lb gorilla of a vendor. They update rarely, because their product is a mission-critical, life-or-death sort of thing. Their current product is heavily, heavily integrated with x.y.z version of software from a different vendor in a different segment, but also weighing in at 800lb. Yes, they specify x.y.z, not just x or even x.y. That software comes bundled with a Python 2.7.5 distribution.

Imagine my woes trying to get pip running, which unhelpfully suggests I upgrade Python. Cannot seem to find any other path to even get pip going because of what I call the "lol just upgrade n00b" factor. Perhaps that information once existed but I cannot find it.

So, I am stuck on this version because of some pretty tight integration, at a couple of removes. I think the vendor-linkage can cause some "drag" that folks who work in a greenfield environment might not be thinking about. It can be unfortunate but there it is.

Re: Why Is the Migration to Python 3 Taking So Long?

#126

Post by gowld »

LIV2 wrote: post #86
_skel wrote: post #71

I recently went through a fairly large upgrade from JDK8 to JDK 11 and it was a bit of a pain -- lots of dependencies to update, etc. But very few code changes were required, and the static type system made it pretty clear when the codebase was broken -- it just wouldn't build. It still took my team several weeks. Migrating from Python 2 to Python 3 is way worse than that -- code changes are required, and because Pyt…

Will this will make people less likely to use Python in future for some projects? I'm no developer or manager but I figure there'd be a thought in the back of my head thinking "what if we need to rewrite this all again for the next major release"

Rewriting your code once every 20 years is a ferrari problem.

Re: Why Is the Migration to Python 3 Taking So Long?

#127

Post by downerending »

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #99
coldtea wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is backwards thinking. And the alternative is cargo cult "newer is better". > Yes, it's expensive to upgrade from Python 2 to Python 3, but it's also expensive for the Python project to maintain 2 versions of Python indefinitely. On the other hand, they could progressively enhance upon a backwards compatible single 2 version. JS manages to do that just fine, as does Java...

JS and Java can do that because they were designed reasonably well from the start. All they tend to add are more features on top of the solid core language. Python's language was not solid (e.g., strings not unicode by default) so they needed a major overhaul.

Kind of an odd slam, given that Python (and most other widely used languages) predated Unicode.

In any case, I think the jury is still out on whether Unicode in the primary string type is a good idea.

Re: Why Is the Migration to Python 3 Taking So Long?

#128

Post by kick »

coldtea wrote: post #69
ogre_codes wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is backwards thinking. Yes, it's expensive to upgrade from Python 2 to Python 3, but it's also expensive for the Python project to maintain 2 versions of Python indefinitely. If someone wanted other than the core Python team wants to step up and maintain Python 2, they are free to do so, it's open source. But failing that, expecting the Python team to support the older/ less functional version of the code indefi…

> This is backwards thinking. And the alternative is cargo cult "newer is better". > Yes, it's expensive to upgrade from Python 2 to Python 3, but it's also expensive for the Python project to maintain 2 versions of Python indefinitely. On the other hand, they could progressively enhance upon a backwards compatible single 2 version. JS manages to do that just fine, as does Java...

Almost everyone hates both Java and Javascript.

Re: Why Is the Migration to Python 3 Taking So Long?

#130

Post by petre »

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #99
coldtea wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is backwards thinking. And the alternative is cargo cult "newer is better". > Yes, it's expensive to upgrade from Python 2 to Python 3, but it's also expensive for the Python project to maintain 2 versions of Python indefinitely. On the other hand, they could progressively enhance upon a backwards compatible single 2 version. JS manages to do that just fine, as does Java...

JS and Java can do that because they were designed reasonably well from the start. All they tend to add are more features on top of the solid core language. Python's language was not solid (e.g., strings not unicode by default) so they needed a major overhaul.

I wouldn't call Js a reasonably well designed language but at least it supports Unicode strings.
Post reply on HN