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As an independent contractor maintaining large Python 2 codebases, your comments really hit home for me. I only have a portion of my time each month to maintain

As an independent contractor maintaining large Python 2 codebases, your comments really hit home for me. I only have a portion of my time each month to maintain and develop features for them. If the Python 2 floodgate ever breaks, I am more likely to rewrite the system in a statically typed language. Even today, I am tempted. I know that a sibling mentions the ridiculousness of the situation, but a forced depreciation of the Python 2 runtime (see also, Windows) is a billable, justifiable, reason to do the work of refactoring parts of the system. I do not expect those billable hours to happen in the next decade, however.

rsj_hn 9y ago
This. I don't think people realize that there are fixed costs that are born in making these kinds of migrations so that migrating to Java from python is not 100x more work than migrating from python 2 to python 3. There is no such thing as a small breaking change to a runtime. Maybe one way of thinking about it is to take a hard drive full of data and randomly flip a few bits. Then ask what the effort is to find and fix all the errors, and whether this effort is a function of the number of bits flipped or the size of the drive. The people who don't understand/have sympathy with my concerns are saying -- it will only introduce a few breaking changes -- but I'm looking at the size of the project. But this condescending attitude coming from some in the python community really isn't helping the language any. I am not saying that everyone has to share my concerns, but they certainly aren't "nonsense" or "ridiculous".
- brianwawok 9y ago
  If you actually have tests it's not half as bad as you are making it out to be. If your code base is a big pile with no tests.. well you dug that grave.
  - rsj_hn 9y ago
    Sure, we have tests, we have a whole ecosystem -- written in python2 -- but that's not a justification to introduce breaking changes or a guarantee that the tests will catch all regressions. We also have dependencies. Moreover, unless your system is a toy, tests aren't going to give you the same guarantees as having a system be hammered by real world events for 5 years.
- iak8god 9y ago
  Let me get this straight: your coworkers - Java devs in a "Java shop" - tell you that Python isn't "enterprise-ready" even though your project is written in Python and has been successfully doing whatever it does for many years. I refer to this dismissive sentiment by Java devs as "nonsense" and you interpret my comment as condescension by the Python community? I'm sorry to be the one to break this to you friend, but you must be suffering from the Java shop version of Stockholm Syndrome.

rsj_hn 9y ago

This. I don't think people realize that there are fixed costs that are born in making these kinds of migrations so that migrating to Java from python is not 100x more work than migrating from python 2 to python 3. There is no such thing as a small breaking change to a runtime. Maybe one way of thinking about it is to take a hard drive full of data and randomly flip a few bits. Then ask what the effort is to find and fix all the errors, and whether this effort is a function of the number of bits flipped or the size of the drive. The people who don't understand/have sympathy with my concerns are saying -- it will only introduce a few breaking changes -- but I'm looking at the size of the project. But this condescending attitude coming from some in the python community really isn't helping the language any. I am not saying that everyone has to share my concerns, but they certainly aren't "nonsense" or "ridiculous".

brianwawok 9y ago
If you actually have tests it's not half as bad as you are making it out to be. If your code base is a big pile with no tests.. well you dug that grave.
- rsj_hn 9y ago
  Sure, we have tests, we have a whole ecosystem -- written in python2 -- but that's not a justification to introduce breaking changes or a guarantee that the tests will catch all regressions. We also have dependencies. Moreover, unless your system is a toy, tests aren't going to give you the same guarantees as having a system be hammered by real world events for 5 years.
iak8god 9y ago
Let me get this straight: your coworkers - Java devs in a "Java shop" - tell you that Python isn't "enterprise-ready" even though your project is written in Python and has been successfully doing whatever it does for many years. I refer to this dismissive sentiment by Java devs as "nonsense" and you interpret my comment as condescension by the Python community? I'm sorry to be the one to break this to you friend, but you must be suffering from the Java shop version of Stockholm Syndrome.