6 ms·

The python language developers did not do it wrong. The community of python users, which include companies with ten year old unmaintained scripts, did not want

The python language developers did not do it wrong. The community of python users, which include companies with ten year old unmaintained scripts, did not want it invest to transition until the absolute last second. The "Apple Solution" is to make the last second the first second. Who knows if that's the right thing to do.

fnord123 5y ago
The python language developers absolutely did do it wrong. You could not run mixed python2 and python3 code. Either all your dependencies were migrated and you could flip the switch and try things out, or some stragglers kept you running code with compatibilities for 2 and 3 while you waited. And if one of your dependencies started using new features from 3.x it would break everyone stuck on 2.7, so you can't even use the new features in your library. So why would you bother migrating? So everyone was stuck in a game theoretical position where there was no first mover advantage because one straggler would invalidate all the investment.
- ric2b 5y ago
  > So everyone was stuck in a game theoretical position where there was no first mover advantage because one straggler would invalidate all the investment. Clearly not, as most libraries are now Python 3 only, so the switch did happen. I do see a lot of people complaining but I see no practical solutions being suggested. "Just don't do a breaking change" isn't a practical solution when the problem being fixed was such a core feature of every language, strings.
  - fnord123 5y ago
    >Clearly not, as most libraries are now Python 3 only, so the switch did happen. You don't build a convincing argument that the python developers did nothing wrong when saying this 1.5 years after python 2.7 has been EOL. >I do see a lot of people complaining but I see no practical solutions being suggested. "Just don't do a breaking change" isn't a practical solution when the problem being fixed was such a core feature of every language, strings. A system should have been put in place to allow python3 code to import python2 code. Then people have an incentive to actually run python3 and use python3 features. More people are stuck on Java8 which has been EOL for a very long time. They are often stuck because Android hasn't upgraded afaik. But Java11, 14, etc can use almost all Java8 code unless it uses I think sun.misc.Unsafe or something like that. The point is that people can use modern Javas with Java libraries targeting older versions.
josefx 5y ago
> The community of python users, which include companies with ten year old unmaintained scripts, did not want it invest to transition until the absolute last second. Try shipping python3 scripts to systems that only have python2 interpreters. Doesn't work very well unless you also start to ship the interpreter and all its dependencies. I learned my lesson and just avoid distributing any Python code to customers now.
- ric2b 5y ago
  What language lets you ship scripts that use features of version X and also works on versions <X? Docker tends to be the easy solution for all this stuff, and it's language agnostic. > Doesn't work very well unless you also start to ship the interpreter and all its dependencies. That basically applies to everything that isn't a statically linked binary.
  - fnord123 5y ago
    Agree with you here. If you try to deploy a C program to ancient centos then it can also fail with glibc being incompatible. https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2019/08/01/how-the-gnu-c-library-handles-backward-compatibility https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2019/08/01/how-the-gnu-c-...
    - josefx 5y ago
      But it will run on a modern system if you compiled it against the CentOS version. I have a VM running to do just that. Trying to run Python 2 code on a modern runtime on the other hand will have the Python community feed your remains to the pigs.
    - nonameiguess 5y ago
      Much different from Python, though. As long as you compile your C program against the same version of libc you're running against, the program will still work, no matter how old the code. You just can't run a program that was compiled against an incompatible libc. A Python 2 interpreter can't run Python 3 code, and vice versa, no matter what, because the actual language changed.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

fnord123 5y ago

The python language developers absolutely did do it wrong. You could not run mixed python2 and python3 code. Either all your dependencies were migrated and you could flip the switch and try things out, or some stragglers kept you running code with compatibilities for 2 and 3 while you waited. And if one of your dependencies started using new features from 3.x it would break everyone stuck on 2.7, so you can't even use the new features in your library. So why would you bother migrating? So everyone was stuck in a game theoretical position where there was no first mover advantage because one straggler would invalidate all the investment.

ric2b 5y ago
> So everyone was stuck in a game theoretical position where there was no first mover advantage because one straggler would invalidate all the investment. Clearly not, as most libraries are now Python 3 only, so the switch did happen. I do see a lot of people complaining but I see no practical solutions being suggested. "Just don't do a breaking change" isn't a practical solution when the problem being fixed was such a core feature of every language, strings.
- fnord123 5y ago
  >Clearly not, as most libraries are now Python 3 only, so the switch did happen. You don't build a convincing argument that the python developers did nothing wrong when saying this 1.5 years after python 2.7 has been EOL. >I do see a lot of people complaining but I see no practical solutions being suggested. "Just don't do a breaking change" isn't a practical solution when the problem being fixed was such a core feature of every language, strings. A system should have been put in place to allow python3 code to import python2 code. Then people have an incentive to actually run python3 and use python3 features. More people are stuck on Java8 which has been EOL for a very long time. They are often stuck because Android hasn't upgraded afaik. But Java11, 14, etc can use almost all Java8 code unless it uses I think sun.misc.Unsafe or something like that. The point is that people can use modern Javas with Java libraries targeting older versions.

josefx 5y ago

> The community of python users, which include companies with ten year old unmaintained scripts, did not want it invest to transition until the absolute last second. Try shipping python3 scripts to systems that only have python2 interpreters. Doesn't work very well unless you also start to ship the interpreter and all its dependencies. I learned my lesson and just avoid distributing any Python code to customers now.

ric2b 5y ago
What language lets you ship scripts that use features of version X and also works on versions <X? Docker tends to be the easy solution for all this stuff, and it's language agnostic. > Doesn't work very well unless you also start to ship the interpreter and all its dependencies. That basically applies to everything that isn't a statically linked binary.
- fnord123 5y ago
  Agree with you here. If you try to deploy a C program to ancient centos then it can also fail with glibc being incompatible. https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2019/08/01/how-the-gnu-c-library-handles-backward-compatibility https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2019/08/01/how-the-gnu-c-...
  - josefx 5y ago
    But it will run on a modern system if you compiled it against the CentOS version. I have a VM running to do just that. Trying to run Python 2 code on a modern runtime on the other hand will have the Python community feed your remains to the pigs.
  - nonameiguess 5y ago
    Much different from Python, though. As long as you compile your C program against the same version of libc you're running against, the program will still work, no matter how old the code. You just can't run a program that was compiled against an incompatible libc. A Python 2 interpreter can't run Python 3 code, and vice versa, no matter what, because the actual language changed.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]