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Why does this guy care if others don't drop Python2 support? Instead, live and let live. Everyone is going to use what they want. People have been whining abou

Why does this guy care if others don't drop Python2 support? Instead, live and let live. Everyone is going to use what they want. People have been whining about this for almost a decade now, give it up. This community isn't going to be on one version again, and that is NOT the community's fault. It's the core dev team and Guido's for poor decision making, technical churn and refusal to go back and fix their mistakes. There's no technical reason why CPython can't run Python2 and 3 code, JVMs and the CLR have proven this sort of thing is possible. If there's not strong enough support of Python3, let it die. Technical churn is not supposed to survive, not live on propaganda and coercion. I don't see the problem. If he bought into 3 before it succeeded, he created his own problem. I plan on porting what I have over when 3 actually gets over the hump but not before. That's what's in my best interests, which is what everyone should do (and it's exactly what the core dev team and GVR did). Besides, if you're not into numerical Python and mainly use it for web, PyPy makes more sense to migrate to than Python3.

daveguy 10y ago
I agree. And if you're into numerical Python, sticking with Python 2.7 is standard. Why would you migrate to Python3 when there is no performance benefit in numerical computing? If you're going to migrate may as well migrate to what will improve performance on the non-numpy bits (pypy) than a migration just for the sake of migrating (py3).
- yeukhon 10y ago
  Proof that there is no performance improvement? There are some changes in PY3 making CPython more performant in some areas, but in some other areas PY3 may perform worse. There was a PyCon talk about this a few years back.
  - daveguy 10y ago
    I haven't seen any proof there is a performance improvement. The only comprehensive benchmarks I have seen show on par or worse performance. If you are going to improve the performance of something I think it is on the "improved" system to demonstrate an improvement.
zellyn 10y ago
Well, he states in the article that supporting both makes his job as a library writer more difficult. That seems entirely reasonable.
- BuckRogers 10y ago
  Yes but that's for him. He's talking about asking other maintainers to sign some sort of pact to coerce the community into migrating. He can drop Python2 support if he wants. Go ahead, live and let live? He knows that will grant his library overnight irrelevance. If he's so committed to Python3 he can sink on his own. Guys like this, GvR, core dev team ALL think that this is a top-down affair rather than users-up. Wrong. That's the truth regarding the 8-ball he's behind and why his harebrained scheme was hatched. Python3 landed in 2008, people are just getting delusional at this point.
akubera 10y ago
> I plan on porting what I have over when 3 actually gets over the hump but not before. Don't you think that mentality is part of the problem?
- ngoldbaum 10y ago
  Just a bit of an understatement. That's the point of this blog post.
- BuckRogers 10y ago
  No, because as I noted in the parent- I disagree with your premise that there is a problem. This is how open source works, failed ideas are allowed to fail.
  - stoptheworld11 10y ago
    That may be true in the case of smaller open-source things. But when it comes to larger projects, it's largely the same way as it is in the rest of our society: things that are considered too important to the whole are changed regardless of pushback. Not a big deal if something like screen dies or fades. But the same is not true of something as big as Python. Open-source is democratic in that you have a voice, but it doesn't mean your opinion matters much in certain cases. Python2 hardliners have been warned for years. By the time it is sunset it will have been 12 years since it's release. Why should the Python devs stop moving their project forward because you're not interested refactoring and deprecating old code? Where I work we move forward and adapt our code/patterns over time. If an old thing breaks (due to updating to Py3 compatible features), we deprecate/replace or refactor it to work, whichever the team decides holds more value for us as a group. There's probably very little code in there that was written 8 years ago when Python3 dropped. We iterate forward. I get pretty frustrated by this "but this stuff I wrote a decade ago works and I don't wanna..." attitude in the tech world. Not saying people should burn the candle at both ends to keep up, but come on. 12 years and you can't refactor forward? Then you find yourself in a position where, oh shit we really have to burn the candle at both ends. This isn't about the actual work involved then. Because you're going to write code anyway. It's about not wanting to change your headspace (not all that much, esp for experience programmers) to write Python3 compatible code. The burden then is on Python hardliners to keep up or fade away, much in the same way you suggest. Old is replaced with new. It's the way the world works. Get over it.
yeukhon 10y ago
> I plan on porting what I have over when 3 actually gets over the hump but not before. The popularity of major open source projects in Python have been ported or are in progress of porting over to Python 3 (mostly 3.3+). I remember my boss telling me a few days ago in his previous job the codebase was still running Java 1.3 or 1.4. There was no incentive to upgrade because people were afraid of breaking changes, even from to the next major release. So when are they going to port over to 1.4? to 1.7 and then finally 1.8? God knows and trust me that'd be the day IBM AS400 support finally RIP. You can choose to live with that, but the pain of actually maintaining a codebase running on obsolete platform is pain. But ask Ansible maintainers, writing code that has to work with Python 2.3 was brittle. Ask anyone who has done RedHat administration they know too well how brittle working with a system totally 10 years ago (even though RH does support these old version for years). Pain in the fucking ass. > If there's not strong enough support of Python3, let it die. Where did you or the author get that? There is a strong motivation to go to Python 3. It just so happens people are still running on Linux that ships with Python 2 by default, or on MacOSX which is still on Python 2 by default. If you maintain Django and you don't want to drop Python 2 support, you make the call. You don't have to join. He doesn't force people to join his collation. You are making a big deal out of his post/tweet.
- 21 10y ago
  So you think that the major reason people aren't upgrading is that Python 2 ships by default with Linux/MacOSX?
  - makecheck 10y ago
    For what an anecdote is worth: yes, I only use 2.x because the Mac system default is 2.x. Relying on the Mac default Python keeps my binary sizes small, and Python 2.7 is good enough. While I have at least done the __future__ imports to adopt features of 3.x such as print(), a full switch to 3.x will be more trouble than it’s worth until Apple decides to install it.
    - kstrauser 10y ago

daveguy 10y ago

I agree. And if you're into numerical Python, sticking with Python 2.7 is standard. Why would you migrate to Python3 when there is no performance benefit in numerical computing? If you're going to migrate may as well migrate to what will improve performance on the non-numpy bits (pypy) than a migration just for the sake of migrating (py3).

yeukhon 10y ago
Proof that there is no performance improvement? There are some changes in PY3 making CPython more performant in some areas, but in some other areas PY3 may perform worse. There was a PyCon talk about this a few years back.
- daveguy 10y ago
  I haven't seen any proof there is a performance improvement. The only comprehensive benchmarks I have seen show on par or worse performance. If you are going to improve the performance of something I think it is on the "improved" system to demonstrate an improvement.

zellyn 10y ago

Well, he states in the article that supporting both makes his job as a library writer more difficult. That seems entirely reasonable.

BuckRogers 10y ago
Yes but that's for him. He's talking about asking other maintainers to sign some sort of pact to coerce the community into migrating. He can drop Python2 support if he wants. Go ahead, live and let live? He knows that will grant his library overnight irrelevance. If he's so committed to Python3 he can sink on his own. Guys like this, GvR, core dev team ALL think that this is a top-down affair rather than users-up. Wrong. That's the truth regarding the 8-ball he's behind and why his harebrained scheme was hatched. Python3 landed in 2008, people are just getting delusional at this point.

akubera 10y ago

> I plan on porting what I have over when 3 actually gets over the hump but not before. Don't you think that mentality is part of the problem?

ngoldbaum 10y ago
Just a bit of an understatement. That's the point of this blog post.
BuckRogers 10y ago
No, because as I noted in the parent- I disagree with your premise that there is a problem. This is how open source works, failed ideas are allowed to fail.
- stoptheworld11 10y ago
  That may be true in the case of smaller open-source things. But when it comes to larger projects, it's largely the same way as it is in the rest of our society: things that are considered too important to the whole are changed regardless of pushback. Not a big deal if something like screen dies or fades. But the same is not true of something as big as Python. Open-source is democratic in that you have a voice, but it doesn't mean your opinion matters much in certain cases. Python2 hardliners have been warned for years. By the time it is sunset it will have been 12 years since it's release. Why should the Python devs stop moving their project forward because you're not interested refactoring and deprecating old code? Where I work we move forward and adapt our code/patterns over time. If an old thing breaks (due to updating to Py3 compatible features), we deprecate/replace or refactor it to work, whichever the team decides holds more value for us as a group. There's probably very little code in there that was written 8 years ago when Python3 dropped. We iterate forward. I get pretty frustrated by this "but this stuff I wrote a decade ago works and I don't wanna..." attitude in the tech world. Not saying people should burn the candle at both ends to keep up, but come on. 12 years and you can't refactor forward? Then you find yourself in a position where, oh shit we really have to burn the candle at both ends. This isn't about the actual work involved then. Because you're going to write code anyway. It's about not wanting to change your headspace (not all that much, esp for experience programmers) to write Python3 compatible code. The burden then is on Python hardliners to keep up or fade away, much in the same way you suggest. Old is replaced with new. It's the way the world works. Get over it.

yeukhon 10y ago

> I plan on porting what I have over when 3 actually gets over the hump but not before. The popularity of major open source projects in Python have been ported or are in progress of porting over to Python 3 (mostly 3.3+). I remember my boss telling me a few days ago in his previous job the codebase was still running Java 1.3 or 1.4. There was no incentive to upgrade because people were afraid of breaking changes, even from to the next major release. So when are they going to port over to 1.4? to 1.7 and then finally 1.8? God knows and trust me that'd be the day IBM AS400 support finally RIP. You can choose to live with that, but the pain of actually maintaining a codebase running on obsolete platform is pain. But ask Ansible maintainers, writing code that has to work with Python 2.3 was brittle. Ask anyone who has done RedHat administration they know too well how brittle working with a system totally 10 years ago (even though RH does support these old version for years). Pain in the fucking ass. > If there's not strong enough support of Python3, let it die. Where did you or the author get that? There is a strong motivation to go to Python 3. It just so happens people are still running on Linux that ships with Python 2 by default, or on MacOSX which is still on Python 2 by default. If you maintain Django and you don't want to drop Python 2 support, you make the call. You don't have to join. He doesn't force people to join his collation. You are making a big deal out of his post/tweet.

21 10y ago
So you think that the major reason people aren't upgrading is that Python 2 ships by default with Linux/MacOSX?
- makecheck 10y ago
  For what an anecdote is worth: yes, I only use 2.x because the Mac system default is 2.x. Relying on the Mac default Python keeps my binary sizes small, and Python 2.7 is good enough. While I have at least done the __future__ imports to adopt features of 3.x such as print(), a full switch to 3.x will be more trouble than it’s worth until Apple decides to install it.
  - kstrauser 10y ago