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Why CCP is still using Python 2

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Re: Why CCP is still using Python 2

#91

Post by klibertp »

dded wrote: post #84
klibertp wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most places I know of running WinXP are completely cut off from Internet, using personal media like pendrives is prohibited and the identity of a user is confirmed with physical "PKI card" or something. They will use their XP's long after the universe dies, I think.

"Most"? Really? Most of the XP machines I know of are being used like any normal desktop machine: email, browsing, office, thumb drives, etc. I know things are different with industrial machine control, they might be different at my doctor's office, and so forth. But I don't think those special situations add up to "most". Not yet.

Most of the 4 places I know of, yes :D

And the dentist office is one of them, actually. Anyway, I may be wrong about this right now, but as you note, in a few years, when the support dies and nothing works on XP any longer it will still thrive in environments I describe.

Re: Why CCP is still using Python 2

#93

Post by oblio »

shadowmint wrote: post #45
oblio wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why Python 3 is a flop. It's a incompatible, new version of a programming language. It's seen slow, steady, constant adoption. In the low single digits, but that's to be expected for a incompatible new version. Most Linux distributions will be adopting it, most mainstream packages are ported or are planning a port. Want to bet that in 3 years' time Python 3 will be the most popular Python version (…

I really don't know what to say to that. Imagine if the java 9 runtime came out today and 2-4% of people were downloading and installing it compared to the java 8 runtime five years later . That's a flop. Python 3 has not been a success. I fail to see why python is magically exempt from the common 'no one uses it, product is DOA' wisdom.

And then people bitch and moan about Java's type erasure since the type when Java added generics. You can't have everything. Python 3 is not backwards compatible. Its adoption was bound to not be 90% in 1 year or so, especially for an already widely used and embedded system.

Python 3 is not a success, but it is a quite nice base for building the next 10 years of Python. And for this goal, Python 3 is probably on track.

Re: Why CCP is still using Python 2

#94

Post by stcredzero »

raylu wrote: post #52
stcredzero wrote: post #17

We have very few automated tests. He could have just written that one sentence.

That's quite a glorified view of tests. You can have the best test coverage in the world backed by a great CI culture but if porting something is a huge time investment, it may still be a huge time investment. Maybe there's one 2.x feature that you use almost everywhere that has been removed in 3.x and there's no simple way to replace it automatically.

You can have the best test coverage in the world backed by a great CI culture but if porting something is a huge time investment, it may still be a huge time investment.

The right way to port is this: You make a rewriting engine that does the porting for you, and you develop on that, not on the port directly. The maintenance team keeps adding features to the legacy engine, but you can absorb those changes by running your rewriting engine on the whole code base.

Then, when the ported version is passing tests and looks good enough, you switch people over to the port. I've done this. It works. In fact, I know of at least one company that has based a consulting practice around this technique.

Re: Why CCP is still using Python 2

#95

Post by ghshephard »

oblio wrote: post #40
ghshephard wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-Virus systems are not required for anybody who practices even a tiny modicum of caution (Don't browse with plugins like java enabled, never open attachments, don't click on links) - and in stand alone with a half decent set of firewall rules your Windows XP system will be fine.

A patched system with a firewall on and without "trojan horses" brought in by the user is relatively safe. XP will stop getting patches soon. And this list ( http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-26/pr... ) is only going to get longer and longer, because even though Microsoft will be EOLing XP, there will be tens of millions of Internet facing machines using it, probably even in 2020.

Having a firewall + not loading trojans gets you 99.9% of the way to security.

The problems are that normally people (A) don't want to deal with the hassle of a firewall, and (B) don't like to be cautious about opening attachments (C) People don't like to be restrained about what they click on, and finally (D) People tend to browse with all sorts of plugins loaded (not to mention Javascript being almost universally loaded).

For those people, yes, they will need to have a lot more handholding by their operating system vendor.

For somebody running a Windows XP system that doesn't have to do any of those (Cash Register, Kiosk, Office Machine) - they are fine, can be locked down, and can probably run Windows XP for the next 20 years without concern.

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