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The problem is that it wasn't really a transition. Rather, Python3 is a new language that is deceptively similar to--and crucially, not compatible with--Python

The problem is that it wasn't really a transition. Rather, Python3 is a new language that is deceptively similar to--and crucially, not compatible with--Python2. Nothing really wrong with that, but it should have been called "Cobra" or something. And the weird jihad for killing off Python2 should never have happened. If everyone moved to Cobra on their own, great. But there should have been no beatings.

oliwarner 7y ago
This assumes that you can splinter developers, the community and all their efforts into two new things and still have the same operational power. The act of killing off V2 gives downstream developers the right to stop supporting it; regain some focus.
- downerending 7y ago
  > The act of killing off V2 gives downstream developers the right to stop supporting it Seems like a strange way to give developers more "rights".
  - oliwarner 7y ago
    Call it what you will but if python 1 and 2 were still supported, I'd have customers demanding I support them indefinitely. This way there's no expectation, I get to wash my hands of it all. And without an awkward "I'm moving to Viper now chaps". It's a system update paradigm that people understand.
    - downerending 7y ago
      I'm old school--I try to give my customers what they want.
      - oliwarner 7y ago
        That works when you have one or two customers per codebase. It's still not great. Context switching Python 2 and 3 is getting increasingly hard as 3 diverges. But when you have a few dozen customers on a single product, supporting edge-cases that require core forks becomes incredibly hard. Especially when you need modern Python features. We tried it. It doubled TTL for simple patches, and meant the Py2 version fell behind in terms of gross features. It was expensive for us, worse for the customer, so we dropped it and moved to a unified core. We had one customer threaten to leave but they didn't. Somebody in their IT department rubbed two brain cells together and agreed with our assessment. A customer might leave over this sort of behaviour, but again this worked out to be more cost effective, so we would probably do the same when Python 3 is EOL. Wheel keeps turning.

oliwarner 7y ago

This assumes that you can splinter developers, the community and all their efforts into two new things and still have the same operational power. The act of killing off V2 gives downstream developers the right to stop supporting it; regain some focus.

downerending 7y ago
> The act of killing off V2 gives downstream developers the right to stop supporting it Seems like a strange way to give developers more "rights".
- oliwarner 7y ago
  Call it what you will but if python 1 and 2 were still supported, I'd have customers demanding I support them indefinitely. This way there's no expectation, I get to wash my hands of it all. And without an awkward "I'm moving to Viper now chaps". It's a system update paradigm that people understand.
  - downerending 7y ago
    I'm old school--I try to give my customers what they want.
    - oliwarner 7y ago
      That works when you have one or two customers per codebase. It's still not great. Context switching Python 2 and 3 is getting increasingly hard as 3 diverges. But when you have a few dozen customers on a single product, supporting edge-cases that require core forks becomes incredibly hard. Especially when you need modern Python features. We tried it. It doubled TTL for simple patches, and meant the Py2 version fell behind in terms of gross features. It was expensive for us, worse for the customer, so we dropped it and moved to a unified core. We had one customer threaten to leave but they didn't. Somebody in their IT department rubbed two brain cells together and agreed with our assessment. A customer might leave over this sort of behaviour, but again this worked out to be more cost effective, so we would probably do the same when Python 3 is EOL. Wheel keeps turning.