Why Is the Migration to Python 3 Taking So Long?
stackoverflow.blog
Why Is the Migration to Python 3 Taking So Long?
1–10 of 355 posts
Re: Why Is the Migration to Python 3 Taking So Long?
#2I never knew if this was a cynic's answer or truthful, but I was told by my manager at one point that RedHat's OS is superglued to python2 and spends a lot of money to keep python2 in good working order. I highly expect it's a cynic's response and please read it as such until someone in-the-know can retort my post.
Re: Why Is the Migration to Python 3 Taking So Long?
#3Python, unlike a C executable, could hypothetically stop working tomorrow. Researchers who have code that works/businesses don't give a shit about the esoteric differences between py2 and py3, they just want their stuff to keep working. This is similar to the banks still running Cobal backends, I don't know why everyone cares, I guarantee multiple servers out there are running executables that couldn't be rebuilt, but those don't curse you out on terminal every time I turn one on
Re: Why Is the Migration to Python 3 Taking So Long?
#4Simple answer. Updating legacy code. If it works now why upgrade? Stability is more important than some new features of the language. Granted that has its downfalls via security issues but stability wins
If you have a hole it's hard to dig yourself out of it. This is why I prefer modular apps instead of monolithic codebases. You can upgrade piece by piece. Otherwise it's all or nothing and dangerous
Re: Why Is the Migration to Python 3 Taking So Long?
#5I never knew if this was a cynic's answer or truthful, but I was told by my manager at one point that RedHat's OS is superglued to python2 and spends a lot of money to keep python2 in good working order. I highly expect it's a cynic's response and please read it as such until someone in-the-know can retort my post.
A lot of tooling (yum, for example) was written in python. This all takes a lot of time to port, especially gtk/gobject stuff, but nowadays this is all written for python3 or JavaScript or Vala.
Re: Why Is the Migration to Python 3 Taking So Long?
#6I never knew if this was a cynic's answer or truthful, but I was told by my manager at one point that RedHat's OS is superglued to python2 and spends a lot of money to keep python2 in good working order. I highly expect it's a cynic's response and please read it as such until someone in-the-know can retort my post.
Red Hat has long support contracts for their server OSes that shipped with Python 2 when it was still kosher to do so.
That means they'll patch Python 2 should vulnerabilities be found on their OS.
Re: Why Is the Migration to Python 3 Taking So Long?
#7Python, unlike a C executable, could hypothetically stop working tomorrow. Researchers who have code that works/businesses don't give a shit about the esoteric differences between py2 and py3, they just want their stuff to keep working. This is similar to the banks still running Cobal backends, I don't know why everyone cares, I guarantee multiple servers out there are running executables that couldn't be rebuilt, bu…
Because software that isn't protected by walls of legislation value features and the end user UX. i.e. "evergreen". Your Nokia N900 running Meego may be sufficient for certain subsets of HN readers but your average user wants Material Design and cannot care less about ideological purity or "if it ain't broke don't fix it".
Re: Why Is the Migration to Python 3 Taking So Long?
#8Because 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. Probably most programmers don't really understand all of the ins and outs. And on top of that, you get weird bugs like this one, which apparently is simply never going to be fixed.
Re: Why Is the Migration to Python 3 Taking So Long?
#9I never knew if this was a cynic's answer or truthful, but I was told by my manager at one point that RedHat's OS is superglued to python2 and spends a lot of money to keep python2 in good working order. I highly expect it's a cynic's response and please read it as such until someone in-the-know can retort my post.
Red Hat has long support contracts for their server OSes that shipped with Python 2 when it was still kosher to do so. That means they'll patch Python 2 should vulnerabilities be found on their OS.
It’s a pain from the outside looking into their business. Their contracts, though, are their business.
Re: Why Is the Migration to Python 3 Taking So Long?
#10Another data point:
According to my highly unscientific survey of the packages in Gentoo's package repo, there are roughly:
- 2500 packages that work with Python 2 or 3
- 1350 packages that work with Python 2 only
- 350 that work with Python 3 only
My methodology: