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I don't really understand such critics which I often see for the python 2 to 3 transition, the OS didn't want to change `python` to be v3 by default which is un
by artemisart 2y ago
I don't really understand such critics which I often see for the python 2 to 3 transition, the OS didn't want to change `python` to be v3 by default which is understandable for backward compatibility, and the fix is simple and immediate with e.g. the python-is-python3 apt package, or an alias python=python3 in the shell, or a symlink in PATH, etc.
- mort96 2y agoWe went from a situation where essentially every UNIX-like system had the same-ish Python available as `python` to a situation where every system has different names for different versions of Python. That's a pretty big change. Imagine if GNU released a new, highly backwards incompatible version of bash called Bash 6, and then some platforms kept /bin/bash as Bash 5 and introduced /bin/bash6, some systems replaced /bin/bash with Bash 6 and introduced /bin/bash5, and some systems removed /bin/bash entirely and /bin/bash6 was the only Bash on the system. Python had the opportunity to be, and was, to some extent, just a standard part of a UNIX-like system, like bash. But now it's just another language where you need to care a lot about interpreter versions and how different distros package it differently and keeping code up to date to work with the latest Python and keeping Python up to date to work with the latest code. This doesn't mean that Python is bad, but it would have been much more useful to me, and quite a few others, if it had stated a ubiquitous tool which is more like Bash and Perl.