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> If you and a billion other people want Python2 so badly, fork it and keep developing it. If the maintainers want to push a language in one way, that is their

> If you and a billion other people want Python2 so badly, fork it and keep developing it. If the maintainers want to push a language in one way, that is their prerogative! It is their time they are using. Seriously. If all of the time spent on whining on the Internet about how python3 killed the dinosaurs was used to make a python2 interpreter, a viable fork would already exist. I mean, there's allegedly a great economic incentive for it, right? All of these business-critical python2 apps are out there, so the whiners claim, you'd think somebody would pay for one if it was actually so much better than python3.

perlgeek 10y ago
There's a fork that was featured on HN a while back, called python2.8 back then, now apparently it's https://github.com/naftaliharris/tauthon https://github.com/naftaliharris/tauthon (FTR I'm one of the folks that think Python 3 is an improvement over Python 2 but we still have a monster 2.7 code base that won't be ported any time soon).
- yokohummer7 10y ago
  Funny, it seems that, by the standards of the OP, the fork you mentioned is not "Python 2" either. It backported type annotations, async/await, and many more from Python 3. So when are we expected to see a "true" Python 2 fork? :)
  - StavrosK 10y ago
    What would a fork that didn't add anything to the language look like? Wouldn't that just be Python 2.7?
    - antoinealb 10y ago
      It could be "just" python 2.7 with security updates / bug fixes, since the official python 2.7 won't be getting them from 2020.
- falcolas 10y ago
  Yeah, that fork gained nothing but negative attention here on HN and Reddit; the general consensus was "why would you do that; Python 3 is so much better". In the face of that criticism, is it any surprise that people are reluctant to create forks?
  - bunderbunder 10y ago
    This all reminds me a fair bit of the transition from VB6 to Visual Basic .NET from about 15 years back. There was a whole lot of wailing about how the changes were unnecessary, and a whole lot of complaining about how expensive it was going to be to rewrite all this existing code. It was all very visible, but if you paid too much attention to it you'd fail to notice that there was also a huge and quiet majority of people who recognized that VB.NET was a much more capable language that allowed people to easily go places they could barely have dreamed of with VB6. I suspect those people were so quiet because they were too busy doing useful work like keeping their toolchain up-to-date to spend much time griping on the Internet. So on the Python side of things, it's the exact same story. I see plenty of blog posts and suchlike by people who are still upset about Python 3, but I'm hard pressed to met someone who feels that way in real life. Most folks I know made the switch ages ago, and are a bit mystified that this whole thing is still such a big deal.
    - Grue3 10y ago
      Yeah, except VB6 was everywhere and I don't remember the last time I heard about Visual Basic .NET. Perhaps there's a lesson here. FWIW, I've yet to work at a place that uses Python 3 in production, or has any concrete plans to transition.
      - bunderbunder 10y ago
        C# does some useful stuff that VB.NET doesn't, while the only thing VB really did better than C# is COM without interop libraries. So VB.NET ended up just being a bridge to C#, so it died out pretty quickly. I still encounter it a fair bit, but it's usually just the oldest modules in a codebase where everything new is in C#.
- jonathonf 10y ago
  Surely tauthon should be python6.2 ? /ducks from downvotes
- gspetr 10y ago
  What's your plan when 2020 rolls in and 2.7 is no longer patched?
  - perlgeek 10y ago
    Good question. Nobody wants to invest time in the codebase, because it's supposed to be replaced. However judging by the current rate, it won't be gone by 2020. I guess when 2020 comes around, we'll be shell-shocked to find that python 2.7 isn't supported anymore, and we'll find some unofficial package source for python 2.7 that will keep us afloat for a few more years.
falcolas 10y ago
> a viable fork would already exist. Enthusiasm and passion do not a viable fork make. The number of people who are truly able to grok and work on the core of Python2 who are not already working for the PSF can probably be counted on one hand, without using all of your fingers. > you'd think somebody would pay for one And yet such fundamental projects like NTP and OpenSSL show that need and use does not create money for those projects. Instead, those with money or time create their own versions (Apple, Google, BSD).
- thehardsphere 10y ago
  "Create their own version" means they pay for it, just not by giving money or time to the people who are doing the main project. If Apple, Google etc are paying for their own NTP and SSL versions, that's clearly because it's important to them in some way. If nobody affected by python2 is going to pay for a python2-fork, python2 must not actually be very important. And yes, PSF might have all the brain trust now, but it's not like a big company whose continuity-of-business really depended on python2 wouldn't attempt to acquire this expertise in some fashion. "Acquire" meaning something as simple as picking a few engineers on staff and saying "learn everything you can about this so we can maintain our own version."

perlgeek 10y ago

There's a fork that was featured on HN a while back, called python2.8 back then, now apparently it's https://github.com/naftaliharris/tauthon https://github.com/naftaliharris/tauthon (FTR I'm one of the folks that think Python 3 is an improvement over Python 2 but we still have a monster 2.7 code base that won't be ported any time soon).

yokohummer7 10y ago
Funny, it seems that, by the standards of the OP, the fork you mentioned is not "Python 2" either. It backported type annotations, async/await, and many more from Python 3. So when are we expected to see a "true" Python 2 fork? :)
- StavrosK 10y ago
  What would a fork that didn't add anything to the language look like? Wouldn't that just be Python 2.7?
  - antoinealb 10y ago
    It could be "just" python 2.7 with security updates / bug fixes, since the official python 2.7 won't be getting them from 2020.
falcolas 10y ago
Yeah, that fork gained nothing but negative attention here on HN and Reddit; the general consensus was "why would you do that; Python 3 is so much better". In the face of that criticism, is it any surprise that people are reluctant to create forks?
- bunderbunder 10y ago
  This all reminds me a fair bit of the transition from VB6 to Visual Basic .NET from about 15 years back. There was a whole lot of wailing about how the changes were unnecessary, and a whole lot of complaining about how expensive it was going to be to rewrite all this existing code. It was all very visible, but if you paid too much attention to it you'd fail to notice that there was also a huge and quiet majority of people who recognized that VB.NET was a much more capable language that allowed people to easily go places they could barely have dreamed of with VB6. I suspect those people were so quiet because they were too busy doing useful work like keeping their toolchain up-to-date to spend much time griping on the Internet. So on the Python side of things, it's the exact same story. I see plenty of blog posts and suchlike by people who are still upset about Python 3, but I'm hard pressed to met someone who feels that way in real life. Most folks I know made the switch ages ago, and are a bit mystified that this whole thing is still such a big deal.
  - Grue3 10y ago
    Yeah, except VB6 was everywhere and I don't remember the last time I heard about Visual Basic .NET. Perhaps there's a lesson here. FWIW, I've yet to work at a place that uses Python 3 in production, or has any concrete plans to transition.
    - bunderbunder 10y ago
      C# does some useful stuff that VB.NET doesn't, while the only thing VB really did better than C# is COM without interop libraries. So VB.NET ended up just being a bridge to C#, so it died out pretty quickly. I still encounter it a fair bit, but it's usually just the oldest modules in a codebase where everything new is in C#.
jonathonf 10y ago
Surely tauthon should be python6.2 ? /ducks from downvotes
gspetr 10y ago
What's your plan when 2020 rolls in and 2.7 is no longer patched?
- perlgeek 10y ago
  Good question. Nobody wants to invest time in the codebase, because it's supposed to be replaced. However judging by the current rate, it won't be gone by 2020. I guess when 2020 comes around, we'll be shell-shocked to find that python 2.7 isn't supported anymore, and we'll find some unofficial package source for python 2.7 that will keep us afloat for a few more years.

falcolas 10y ago

> a viable fork would already exist. Enthusiasm and passion do not a viable fork make. The number of people who are truly able to grok and work on the core of Python2 who are not already working for the PSF can probably be counted on one hand, without using all of your fingers. > you'd think somebody would pay for one And yet such fundamental projects like NTP and OpenSSL show that need and use does not create money for those projects. Instead, those with money or time create their own versions (Apple, Google, BSD).

thehardsphere 10y ago
"Create their own version" means they pay for it, just not by giving money or time to the people who are doing the main project. If Apple, Google etc are paying for their own NTP and SSL versions, that's clearly because it's important to them in some way. If nobody affected by python2 is going to pay for a python2-fork, python2 must not actually be very important. And yes, PSF might have all the brain trust now, but it's not like a big company whose continuity-of-business really depended on python2 wouldn't attempt to acquire this expertise in some fashion. "Acquire" meaning something as simple as picking a few engineers on staff and saying "learn everything you can about this so we can maintain our own version."