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That was one issue I mentioned. You know that. You read my comments. However, I will take your snarky reply and turn it into lemonade by using it as an opportu

That was one issue I mentioned. You know that. You read my comments. However, I will take your snarky reply and turn it into lemonade by using it as an opportunity to talk about how often development teams fail to consider the social implications of their changes. As is mentioned in another comment on this post, the Python team seems to readily admit in retrospect that they didn't predict the pain of having no clear transition path, etc. I think another lesson to take from this experience is the realization that if you create some big "line in the sand" update, you may absolutely inadvertently encourage bad development practices. If the Python 2-to-3 transition had held "ease of transition" as a core value, then it is more likely that that value would have been modeled downstream. By instead initially declaring that the 2-to-3 transition was going to be some watershed moment and people were going to have to update everything, it is not surprising that it could encourage people to just pull the trigger on a bunch of breaking stuff they wanted to do, and come to the (incorrect, but understandable) conclusion that they didn't themselves need backwards compatibility since the entire ecosystem was going through a "unique" non-backwards-compatible change anyways.

dagmx 4y ago
I think part of the issue is that your comments are very ambiguous as to what issues you actually hit. Most of the major Python packages did maintain 2 and 3 compatibility at the same time. Maybe a few packages had bad coding practices but you’re going to hit that in any language. I think you’re extrapolating unfairly
- comfypotato 4y ago
  Seconded. Noted comment is only mildly snarky at worst. Thanks for your insight on the python3 migrations though. I’ll be wary if I ever see something in that context on the horizon.
- tolmasky 4y ago
  > I think you’re extrapolating unfairly But that's exactly the nature of doing this sort of change. Again, I am not a Python person. This transition created an unintentional filter where the utilities with poor practices surfaced to end users, such that their only direct interactions with Python are always negative. So sure, the extrapolation may very well be unfair, but that is the completely avoidable situation they set themselves up for. No other language expects end-users of the programs written in that language to be sympathetic to some internal engineering transition. All this stuff may have great reasons, but you've already failed if you have to explain those reasons to non-Python users, or tell them this is confirmation bias or whatever. It's just not happening with other languages. And this is for big stuff too. Ansible, which uses 2 pythons, one locally and one remotely, was a pain. Add on to this that this was a fairly public boondoggle, that the makers agree wasn't handled well, so whether "fair" or not, this is a common take away I think.
  - dagmx 4y ago
    Tons of other languages have version requirements as part of their end user experience. Whether that’s libc requirements for compiled languages, or Perl language versions being breaking, or even as subtle as differences in behaviour between different compilers such that your system may give different results than another user. So I disagree with your assertion here. Yes it’s unfortunate that this is lifted up to the user, especially because of the fact it’s interpreted, but it’s not anywhere near unique to Python. Therefore I think it’s not a logical outcome to outright avoid Python.
    - bloblaw 4y ago
      > Tons of other languages have version requirements as part of their end user experience. That does not dispute the original claim though. It's still a problem for Python even when other languages have the same problem. > or Perl language versions being breaking Perl 5.0 code written in 1999 will still happily run in 2023. In part due to the fact that breaking changes are *opt-in* within a Perl script. Reference: https://www.perl.com/article/announcing-perl-7/ https://www.perl.com/article/announcing-perl-7/ """Perl 7.0 is going to be v5.32 but with different, saner, more modern defaults. [..] Perl 5 still has Perl 5’s extreme backward compatibility behavior, but Perl 7 gets modern practice with minimal historical baggage. """ Honestly, Perl is an example of extreme backwards compatibility that has the user experience at the forefront of their design decisions.
      - dagmx 4y ago
        I’m not trying to dispute whether it’s a problem. I agree it’s a problem. I’m saying that avoiding Python because of it is illogical (to me) because the problems they’re describing aren’t unique to Python, and I don’t think there’s much that doesn’t suffer from it. Perl is an odd one because, as your comment says, Perl is going 5->7 because 6 was such a disastrous break.
        bloblaw 4y ago
        > I’m not trying to dispute whether it’s a problem. I agree it’s a problem. ack > I’m saying that avoiding Python because of it is illogical (to me) because the problems they’re describing aren’t unique to Python, and I don’t think there’s much that doesn’t suffer from it. I don't completely agree, but I see your point. Any interpreted language (or non-statically linked binaries) could (and does) suffer from these problems. I'd like to see Python have a better packaging story...but for now we live with shipping the developers environment (via docker or virtualenv) for running complex Python applications and services. I will say that *statically linked* compiled languages are able to avoid many of these problems because running these binaries typically only requires the OS (eg, Go, Nim, Rust, Zig, C/C++ when statically linked, Object-Pascal, etc) > Perl is going 5->7 because 6 was such a disastrous break. Agree. And they did the right thing by actually renaming it Raku and skipping the version release.

dagmx 4y ago

I think part of the issue is that your comments are very ambiguous as to what issues you actually hit. Most of the major Python packages did maintain 2 and 3 compatibility at the same time. Maybe a few packages had bad coding practices but you’re going to hit that in any language. I think you’re extrapolating unfairly

comfypotato 4y ago
Seconded. Noted comment is only mildly snarky at worst. Thanks for your insight on the python3 migrations though. I’ll be wary if I ever see something in that context on the horizon.
tolmasky 4y ago
> I think you’re extrapolating unfairly But that's exactly the nature of doing this sort of change. Again, I am not a Python person. This transition created an unintentional filter where the utilities with poor practices surfaced to end users, such that their only direct interactions with Python are always negative. So sure, the extrapolation may very well be unfair, but that is the completely avoidable situation they set themselves up for. No other language expects end-users of the programs written in that language to be sympathetic to some internal engineering transition. All this stuff may have great reasons, but you've already failed if you have to explain those reasons to non-Python users, or tell them this is confirmation bias or whatever. It's just not happening with other languages. And this is for big stuff too. Ansible, which uses 2 pythons, one locally and one remotely, was a pain. Add on to this that this was a fairly public boondoggle, that the makers agree wasn't handled well, so whether "fair" or not, this is a common take away I think.
- dagmx 4y ago
  Tons of other languages have version requirements as part of their end user experience. Whether that’s libc requirements for compiled languages, or Perl language versions being breaking, or even as subtle as differences in behaviour between different compilers such that your system may give different results than another user. So I disagree with your assertion here. Yes it’s unfortunate that this is lifted up to the user, especially because of the fact it’s interpreted, but it’s not anywhere near unique to Python. Therefore I think it’s not a logical outcome to outright avoid Python.
  - bloblaw 4y ago
    > Tons of other languages have version requirements as part of their end user experience. That does not dispute the original claim though. It's still a problem for Python even when other languages have the same problem. > or Perl language versions being breaking Perl 5.0 code written in 1999 will still happily run in 2023. In part due to the fact that breaking changes are *opt-in* within a Perl script. Reference: https://www.perl.com/article/announcing-perl-7/ https://www.perl.com/article/announcing-perl-7/ """Perl 7.0 is going to be v5.32 but with different, saner, more modern defaults. [..] Perl 5 still has Perl 5’s extreme backward compatibility behavior, but Perl 7 gets modern practice with minimal historical baggage. """ Honestly, Perl is an example of extreme backwards compatibility that has the user experience at the forefront of their design decisions.
    - dagmx 4y ago
      I’m not trying to dispute whether it’s a problem. I agree it’s a problem. I’m saying that avoiding Python because of it is illogical (to me) because the problems they’re describing aren’t unique to Python, and I don’t think there’s much that doesn’t suffer from it. Perl is an odd one because, as your comment says, Perl is going 5->7 because 6 was such a disastrous break.
      - bloblaw 4y ago
        > I’m not trying to dispute whether it’s a problem. I agree it’s a problem. ack > I’m saying that avoiding Python because of it is illogical (to me) because the problems they’re describing aren’t unique to Python, and I don’t think there’s much that doesn’t suffer from it. I don't completely agree, but I see your point. Any interpreted language (or non-statically linked binaries) could (and does) suffer from these problems. I'd like to see Python have a better packaging story...but for now we live with shipping the developers environment (via docker or virtualenv) for running complex Python applications and services. I will say that *statically linked* compiled languages are able to avoid many of these problems because running these binaries typically only requires the OS (eg, Go, Nim, Rust, Zig, C/C++ when statically linked, Object-Pascal, etc) > Perl is going 5->7 because 6 was such a disastrous break. Agree. And they did the right thing by actually renaming it Raku and skipping the version release.