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Removing Python 2.x support from Django for version 2.0

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Re: Removing Python 2.x support from Django for version 2.0

#31

Post by coldtea »

Flimm wrote: post #5

The next release, Django 1.11, will be a long-term support release, and the one after that, Django 2.0, will no longer support Python 2. https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2015/jun/25/roadmap/ I've grow to highly respect the Django project for its good documentation, its healthy consideration for backwards compatibility, security, steady improvements and all round goodness.

>its healthy consideration for backwards compatibility

Like screwing the huge majority of users with Python 2.x Django projects and having them update or be left behind?

Re: Removing Python 2.x support from Django for version 2.0

#32

Post by shawabawa3 »

Grue3 wrote: post #9
alanfranzoni wrote: post #3

So, after a poor evolution strategy that lead the Python world to be split in two and forces maintainers to offer two versions for the same library, and upstream maintainers to offer support for two different python versions, the same is happening for Django! I speculate that the latest Django 1.x will remain used - and possibly the most used - for a lot, lot of time.

I think whatever goodies Django 2.x will have, they'll be backported to 1.x by somebody. At my last job they were still using Django 1.6 when I quit last year. Updating to a new version takes a lot of manhours. Rewriting the codebase in a new language (which basically what Python 2 -> Python 3 transition is) would be completely out of the question.

> Rewriting the codebase in a new language (which basically what Python 2 -> Python 3 transition is) would be completely out of the question.

Not even close to rewriting in a new language. In my experience upgrading from django 1.6 to 1.7 is a bigger change than python 2 to 3

Re: Removing Python 2.x support from Django for version 2.0

#33

Post by danpalmer »

coldtea wrote: post #31
Flimm wrote: post #5

The next release, Django 1.11, will be a long-term support release, and the one after that, Django 2.0, will no longer support Python 2. https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2015/jun/25/roadmap/ I've grow to highly respect the Django project for its good documentation, its healthy consideration for backwards compatibility, security, steady improvements and all round goodness.

> its healthy consideration for backwards compatibility Like screwing the huge majority of users with Python 2.x Django projects and having them update or be left behind?

Well it has been on the roadmap for around 3 years, and they will have support for Python 2 in active maintenance for the next ~3 years, so I think this is actually fantastic support from the core team.

Re: Removing Python 2.x support from Django for version 2.0

#34

Post by gtaylor »

vegabook wrote: post #27
viraptor wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is that Python 3 changed some small stuff that you see no benefits in, but moved a year ago, and you're now on Py 3.4. And because of that small no-benefit update, you want to move to completely different language that will start with: no scientific libraries, no community, and will likely require rewrite of everything you work with? Where's the benefit in doing that?

the benefit is that all the wasted energy that went into all the useless 3.x stuff, could have been spent on advancing Python's speed, multicore, or GPU programming capabilities. Instead, for the single use case where Python is clearly the dominant language (for pure network-effect reasons), namely scientific programming, we have been at a standstill for years. In other words, under current stewardship, Python is goi…

> I am also almost 100% certain that if scientific programmers leave Python, the language will stall, and the current 3.x pushers are dangerously looking a gift horse in the mouth.

This sounds like such similar sour grapes to the systemd escapades. Huge initial outroar as certain things happened, followed by a gradual diminishing, then [mostly] acceptance.

This is what is happening with Python 3 and a smaller, doom-and-gloom subset of the userbase. Most of us are thankful that Python is striving to improve, and that we continue to pay nothing to use it. The alarmists are far more noisy than those that are happily continuing to build stuff.

Python will remain massively used in the sciences. It's simple, easy to learn, expressive, and has an excellent ecosystem of modules (which now mostly work on Python 3).

Re: Removing Python 2.x support from Django for version 2.0

#35

Post by mrweasel »

vegabook wrote: post #14
alanfranzoni wrote: post #3

So, after a poor evolution strategy that lead the Python world to be split in two and forces maintainers to offer two versions for the same library, and upstream maintainers to offer support for two different python versions, the same is happening for Django! I speculate that the latest Django 1.x will remain used - and possibly the most used - for a lot, lot of time.

Python 3 is a seriously misguided project. It's got tons of newer-to-Python fans (your HN downvoter demographic), and tons of silent-majority "real-world" users especially in scientific programming who just don't like it. I moved to 3.4 a year ago and, as a data scientist, I have to say I find nothing in 3 to be better than 2, other than the extremely marginal default float arithmetic. I may be wrong for web developm…

To me, unicode alone was worth the switch. I will go to great length to avoid the hell that is unicode in Python 2.

Besides speed, I never seen any good argument that would make me start a new project on 2.7, rather than the latest v3 release. I get that there was a series of data science libraries that wasn't supported initially, but seems to have been solved at this point. So I really do see why people continue to hate Python 3.

I'm not going to argue that the transition couldn't have been handled more smoothly, the period of broken libraries and terrible performance was a little too long.

Re: Removing Python 2.x support from Django for version 2.0

#36

Post by viraptor »

vegabook wrote: post #27
viraptor wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is that Python 3 changed some small stuff that you see no benefits in, but moved a year ago, and you're now on Py 3.4. And because of that small no-benefit update, you want to move to completely different language that will start with: no scientific libraries, no community, and will likely require rewrite of everything you work with? Where's the benefit in doing that?

the benefit is that all the wasted energy that went into all the useless 3.x stuff, could have been spent on advancing Python's speed, multicore, or GPU programming capabilities. Instead, for the single use case where Python is clearly the dominant language (for pure network-effect reasons), namely scientific programming, we have been at a standstill for years. In other words, under current stewardship, Python is goi…

Interesting that you're looking for those improvements in CPython. From your list (IMO): speed and multicore are going to stay where they are in CPython - GIL is unlikely to be removed, because it's basically part of the behaviour right now. There were a few attempts, but it seems nobody even tries anymore. (and I'm fine with that) Maybe pypy, grumpy, or others will do this instead.

I'm not sure why you expect GPU from the python itself though. That's completely up to libraries and they can exist for either 2.x or 3.x. Was there ever a CPython GPU related project?

Re: Removing Python 2.x support from Django for version 2.0

#37

Post by nsomaru »

Galanwe wrote: post #21
Flimm wrote: post #5

The next release, Django 1.11, will be a long-term support release, and the one after that, Django 2.0, will no longer support Python 2. https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2015/jun/25/roadmap/ I've grow to highly respect the Django project for its good documentation, its healthy consideration for backwards compatibility, security, steady improvements and all round goodness.

Interestingly, I have the exact opposite view on Django. I hate their API and overall architecture, which I find to be the result of glueing features on top of features for many years. The internal code also is just like that: looks like every single method is riddled with out-of-band conditionals, which is the result of a community that prefers to hack things to work, instead of rethinking/refactoring.

Could you give a description of some subsystem that has been architectured in this way, and then provide a concrete example of some methods that implement this pattern and why it is bad?

We are users of Django, and it helps us to deliver projects, quickly. Interested to know how you think things could be improved.

Re: Removing Python 2.x support from Django for version 2.0

#38

Post by stuaxo »

Galanwe wrote: post #21
Flimm wrote: post #5

The next release, Django 1.11, will be a long-term support release, and the one after that, Django 2.0, will no longer support Python 2. https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2015/jun/25/roadmap/ I've grow to highly respect the Django project for its good documentation, its healthy consideration for backwards compatibility, security, steady improvements and all round goodness.

Interestingly, I have the exact opposite view on Django. I hate their API and overall architecture, which I find to be the result of glueing features on top of features for many years. The internal code also is just like that: looks like every single method is riddled with out-of-band conditionals, which is the result of a community that prefers to hack things to work, instead of rethinking/refactoring.

Last time I looked a lot of the insides were terrible.

A project I was really impressed with the internals of is Celery (was expecting the worst having seen Django).

Re: Removing Python 2.x support from Django for version 2.0

#39

Post by vegabook »

gtaylor wrote: post #34
vegabook wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the benefit is that all the wasted energy that went into all the useless 3.x stuff, could have been spent on advancing Python's speed, multicore, or GPU programming capabilities. Instead, for the single use case where Python is clearly the dominant language (for pure network-effect reasons), namely scientific programming, we have been at a standstill for years. In other words, under current stewardship, Python is goi…

> I am also almost 100% certain that if scientific programmers leave Python, the language will stall, and the current 3.x pushers are dangerously looking a gift horse in the mouth. This sounds like such similar sour grapes to the systemd escapades. Huge initial outroar as certain things happened, followed by a gradual diminishing, then [mostly] acceptance. This is what is happening with Python 3 and a smaller, doom-a…

Except that personally I see the benefit of Systemd every time I boot my linux computer. It just works, fast, and clean. I don't partake in the philosophical arguments. I just want it to work. Py3 by contrast, simply throws cruft curveballs at me. No tangible benefit. This is not a systemd-style issue.

And yes Python will likely continue massively to be used in the sciences, 3 bears like me notwithstanding, so it would be good if the current stewards would actually recognize the fact that this is their core base of users and please could they focus on them instead of the web people who are much more fickle and moving already.

Re: Removing Python 2.x support from Django for version 2.0

#40

Post by danpalmer »

Galanwe wrote: post #21
Flimm wrote: post #5

The next release, Django 1.11, will be a long-term support release, and the one after that, Django 2.0, will no longer support Python 2. https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2015/jun/25/roadmap/ I've grow to highly respect the Django project for its good documentation, its healthy consideration for backwards compatibility, security, steady improvements and all round goodness.

Interestingly, I have the exact opposite view on Django. I hate their API and overall architecture, which I find to be the result of glueing features on top of features for many years. The internal code also is just like that: looks like every single method is riddled with out-of-band conditionals, which is the result of a community that prefers to hack things to work, instead of rethinking/refactoring.

I'd prefer to hold judgement on the internals of Django, however as a developer using the API, I also think it's a pleasure to use. There is a very high level of consistency, similar patterns used throughout, and the architecture results in a project structure that I can explain to a new developer who has never used Django before in minutes. I find few frameworks really scale in terms of structure and consistency, and working on a large web application, Django has proven to be very valuable for us.

I'm curious, what's an example of a framework that you think has a better architecture, and in what context are you evaluating this?

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