4 ms·

Actually I think the transition to Python3 went pretty well. Most people are on 3 now, and Python's ecosystem is thriving.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
It only took 13 years.
- Kye 5y ago
  How long does it normally take to transition the community around a programming language to a new version that makes substantial changes?
  - dagw 5y ago
    Ruby 1->2 and php 4->5 and 5->7 went a lot faster. On the other hand getting everybody from Fortran 90 to Fortran 2008 will probably take at least one more decade ;)
  - magicalhippo 5y ago
    Depends on what you mean by substantial changes, but Delphi changed its string type from ANSI to Unicode some time ago, similar to what Python did. For the vast majority of users it was a very easy transition, due to the substantial work done by the Delphi team to make it so. For a lot of programs, a mere recompilation was required. We had a 300kLOC program + dependencies at that time, and one of us spent a 2-3 days on migrating, fixing small issues and testing.
goodoldneon 5y ago
My company had to spend a ton of engineering time to migrate to 3
- busterarm 5y ago
  Still not done. Plus the burden of having to upgrade applications that don't make sense to from a financial perspective is totally not cool.
  - treesknees 5y ago
    We've barely started (we produce embedded router/fw appliances.) We've written up our backlog items to start tackling it but when you're under a constant crunch to get features and bug fixes out the door, PM will never prioritize willingly introducing subtle bugs across the entire codebase unless there's an extremely strong reason to upgrade. Unfortunately "no longer receives security updates" isn't strong enough. Until we can't ship a new feature without Python 3, we'll be on 2 for a long time.
    - Izkata 5y ago
      We're in a similar state for web apps: No one wants to put extensive developer time on something with nothing new to sell.
  - whoknowswhat11 5y ago
    It's this + they broke stuff that didn't need to be broken + made it hard / impossible to target both 2 and 3 and/or code incrementally in 3 on top of a 2 code base. The other nightmare is if a dependency isn't actively maintained you have also port your DEPENDENCIES over. Straight waste of time in many many cases. And your PM is asking (fairly) what new cool feature do we get? And you say - the program will run more slowly after all this stupid work. And boy - did things run more slowly especially in the early version - you upgraded and then got crap as a result so PM is asking why all this work made things WORSE for users.
prepend 5y ago
3 came out in 2008. [0] I don’t think 13 years is “pretty well.” There was still lots of python2 package installs [1] even after 2.x officially ended. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Python https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Python [1] https://dev.to/hugovk/python-version-share-over-time-6-1jb8 https://dev.to/hugovk/python-version-share-over-time-6-1jb8
- bildung 5y ago
  The original plan was to have a transition period of about 10 years. Didn't we have almost exactly that?
  - pansa2 5y ago
    The original plan was for Python 2 support to end in 2015.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

It only took 13 years.

Kye 5y ago
How long does it normally take to transition the community around a programming language to a new version that makes substantial changes?
- dagw 5y ago
  Ruby 1->2 and php 4->5 and 5->7 went a lot faster. On the other hand getting everybody from Fortran 90 to Fortran 2008 will probably take at least one more decade ;)
- magicalhippo 5y ago
  Depends on what you mean by substantial changes, but Delphi changed its string type from ANSI to Unicode some time ago, similar to what Python did. For the vast majority of users it was a very easy transition, due to the substantial work done by the Delphi team to make it so. For a lot of programs, a mere recompilation was required. We had a 300kLOC program + dependencies at that time, and one of us spent a 2-3 days on migrating, fixing small issues and testing.

goodoldneon 5y ago

My company had to spend a ton of engineering time to migrate to 3

busterarm 5y ago
Still not done. Plus the burden of having to upgrade applications that don't make sense to from a financial perspective is totally not cool.
- treesknees 5y ago
  We've barely started (we produce embedded router/fw appliances.) We've written up our backlog items to start tackling it but when you're under a constant crunch to get features and bug fixes out the door, PM will never prioritize willingly introducing subtle bugs across the entire codebase unless there's an extremely strong reason to upgrade. Unfortunately "no longer receives security updates" isn't strong enough. Until we can't ship a new feature without Python 3, we'll be on 2 for a long time.
  - Izkata 5y ago
    We're in a similar state for web apps: No one wants to put extensive developer time on something with nothing new to sell.
- whoknowswhat11 5y ago
  It's this + they broke stuff that didn't need to be broken + made it hard / impossible to target both 2 and 3 and/or code incrementally in 3 on top of a 2 code base. The other nightmare is if a dependency isn't actively maintained you have also port your DEPENDENCIES over. Straight waste of time in many many cases. And your PM is asking (fairly) what new cool feature do we get? And you say - the program will run more slowly after all this stupid work. And boy - did things run more slowly especially in the early version - you upgraded and then got crap as a result so PM is asking why all this work made things WORSE for users.

prepend 5y ago

3 came out in 2008. [0] I don’t think 13 years is “pretty well.” There was still lots of python2 package installs [1] even after 2.x officially ended. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Python https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Python [1] https://dev.to/hugovk/python-version-share-over-time-6-1jb8 https://dev.to/hugovk/python-version-share-over-time-6-1jb8

bildung 5y ago
The original plan was to have a transition period of about 10 years. Didn't we have almost exactly that?
- pansa2 5y ago
  The original plan was for Python 2 support to end in 2015.