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Warn about PyPy being unmaintained

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Re: Warn about PyPy being unmaintained

#71

Post by aragilar »

Hamuko wrote: post #24
aragilar wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between dead (i.e. "unmaintained") and low activity ("not under active development"). From what I can see PyPy is in the latter category (and being in that category does not mean it's going to die soon), so choosing to claim it is unmaintained is notable.

Being three major versions behind CPython is definitely not a great sign for the long-term viability of it.

I'd genuinely be curious what fraction of those changes actually requires porting to other Python implementations. The free-threading changes are inherently interpreter specific, so we can ignore those. A significant change in Python 3.12 is dropping "dead batteries", so that can be ignored as well. From what I can see, the main language changes are typing-based (so could have parser implications), and the subinterpreter support being exposed at the Python level (I don't know whether that makes sense for PyPy either). I think this hints that while certain area of Python are undergoing larger changes (e.g. typing, free-threading), there is no obvious missing piece that might drive someone to contribute to PyPy.

Also, looking at the alternate (full) interpreters that have been around a while, PyPy is much more active than either Jython or IronPython. Rust-python seems more active than PyPy, but it's not clear how complete it is (and has going through similar periods of low activity).

Would I personally use PyPy? I'm not planning to, but given how uv is positioning itself, this gives me vibes of youtube stating it will drop IE 6 at some unspecified time in order to kill IE 6 (see https://benjamintseng.com/2024/02/the-ie6-youtube-conspiracy...).

Re: Warn about PyPy being unmaintained

#72

Post by [deleted] »

stavros wrote: post #62
jorvi wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. For me the biggest signifier is Spotify. They claim their (best) devs don't even code anymore, they use an internal AI tool that they just send prompts to which then checks out a personal test build that they can download off of Slack. "A new feature in 10 minutes!" Okay, if that is the case, why have we only seen like 3-4 minor new QoL improvements in Spotify the last ~12 months, with no new grand features? And…

Everyone here says "if developers are so much faster, why aren't we seeing more features?!" as if the only thing required to release a feature is developers. My CEO keeps asking me "how can we go faster with AI", and my answer is "we can't, because even if we had developers that would instantly develop any feature perfectly, we'd still be bottlenecked on how slow we are at deciding what to actually release".

[deleted]

Re: Warn about PyPy being unmaintained

#73

Post by m000 »

cfbolztereick wrote: post #43

PyPy isn't unmaintained. We are certainly fixing bugs and are occasionally improving the jit. However, the remaining core devs (me among them) don't have the capacity to keep up with cpython. So for supporting new cpython versions we'll need new people to step up. For 3.12 this has started, we have a new contributor who is pushing this along.

The text merged to the documentation is more concise than the PR title:

> not actively developed anymore

Re: Warn about PyPy being unmaintained

#74

Post by simonw »

justinclift wrote: post #49
croddin wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t need to throw a stack of cash at them, Anthropic and OpenAI have programs for open source maintainers. https://claude.com/contact-sales/claude-for-oss https://openai.com/form/codex-for-oss/

Isn't the Claude one only for a few months? (I haven't checked the OpenAI one, as I have no interest in them)

Both programs have been announced as granting six months, but neither of them have explicitly said that there won't be options to renew for another six months.

I expect they haven't decided that themselves yet and don't want to commit publicly until they've seen how well the program goes.

Re: Warn about PyPy being unmaintained

#75

Post by aragilar »

puzzledobserver wrote: post #54
shevy-java wrote: post #29

What annoys me is the name. Early morning it took me a moment to realise that PyPy is not PyPi, so at first I thought they referred to PyPi. Really, just for the name confusion alone, one of those two should have to go. Edit: I understand the underlying issue and the PyPy developer's opinion. I don't disagree on that part; I only refer to the name similarity as a problem.

Wikipedia tells me that the package index PyPI (launched in 2003) is about 4 years older than the interpreter PyPy (first released in 2007). Still, at its core, PyPy is a Python interpreter which is itself written in Python and the name PyPy fittingly describes its technical design.

I think back then PyPI was known as the cheeseshop, so there wouldn't have been the same confusion.

Re: Warn about PyPy being unmaintained

#76

Post by latexr »

skissane wrote: post #14
Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #12

@kvinogradov (Open source endowment), I am (Pinging?) you because I think that you may be of help as I remember you stating that within the Open source endowment and the approach of how & which open source projects are better funded[0] And I think that PyPy might be of interest to the Fund for sponsoring given its close to unmaintained. PyPy is really great in general speeding up Python[1] by magnitudes of order. May…

> @kvinogradov (Open source endowment), I am (Pinging?) you unfortunately, @-pinging does not work on this site, it does nothing to notify anyone. If you want to get a specific person’s attention, use off-site communication mechanisms

> unfortunately, @-pinging does not work on this site

I’d call it fortunate, and a feature. Not pinging certainly avoids many discussions becoming too heated too fast between two people and lets other opinions intervene.

Re: Warn about PyPy being unmaintained

#77

Post by dxdm »

stavros wrote: post #64
shevy-java wrote: post #29

What annoys me is the name. Early morning it took me a moment to realise that PyPy is not PyPi, so at first I thought they referred to PyPi. Really, just for the name confusion alone, one of those two should have to go. Edit: I understand the underlying issue and the PyPy developer's opinion. I don't disagree on that part; I only refer to the name similarity as a problem.

There is no PyPi, it's PyPI (py pee eye), the Python package index.

If you have to insist that a name needs a certain capitalization to properly exist, you're in the territory of brand zealotry and pedantry. The people who don't care for one reason or other vastly outnumber you, and they will invent your disfavored capitalization into existence. The same goes for pronunciation. GIF? Jira?

If your thing can be reached under "pypi.org", you can either accept that people will come up with their own ideas of how to capitalize or pronounce the name, or you can fight against windmills and tell people what ought to exist or not.

Re: Warn about PyPy being unmaintained

#78

Post by BitsAndObjects »

pansa2 wrote: post #26

PyPy is a fantastic achievement and deserves far more support than it gets. Microsoft’s “Faster CPython” team tried to make Python 5x faster but only achieved ~1.5x in four years - meanwhile PyPy has been running at over 5x faster for decades. On the other hand, I always got the impression that the main goal of PyPy is to be a research project (on meta-tracing, STM etc) rather than a replacement for CPython in produc…

The Faster Python project would’ve got further if Microsoft hadn’t let the entire team go when they made large numbers of their programming languages teams redundant last year. All in the name of “AI”. Microsoft basically gave up on core computer science to go chase the hype wave.

Re: Warn about PyPy being unmaintained

#79

Post by BitsAndObjects »

BitsAndObjects wrote: post #78
pansa2 wrote: post #26

PyPy is a fantastic achievement and deserves far more support than it gets. Microsoft’s “Faster CPython” team tried to make Python 5x faster but only achieved ~1.5x in four years - meanwhile PyPy has been running at over 5x faster for decades. On the other hand, I always got the impression that the main goal of PyPy is to be a research project (on meta-tracing, STM etc) rather than a replacement for CPython in produc…

The Faster Python project would’ve got further if Microsoft hadn’t let the entire team go when they made large numbers of their programming languages teams redundant last year. All in the name of “AI”. Microsoft basically gave up on core computer science to go chase the hype wave.

(This affected TypeScript, .NET and other folk too)

Re: Warn about PyPy being unmaintained

#80

Post by latexr »

simonw wrote: post #74
justinclift wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the Claude one only for a few months? (I haven't checked the OpenAI one, as I have no interest in them)

Both programs have been announced as granting six months, but neither of them have explicitly said that there won't be options to renew for another six months. I expect they haven't decided that themselves yet and don't want to commit publicly until they've seen how well the program goes.

Even if you’re right, no one should be making a decision of enrolling into those programs because maybe, with zero indication they’ll be renewed again in six months.

You know what they could also do? Stop the programs for new enrolments next month. Or if if they renew them like you said, it could be with new conditions which exclude people currently on them.

There are too many unknowns, and giving these companies the benefit of the doubt that they’ll give more instead of taking more goes counter to everything they showed so far.

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