The real problem with Python 3 - no business case for conversion (was "I strongly dislike Python 3")

[Roy Smith]

In article <5325a$4c349b5b$4275d90a$27439 at FUSE.NET>,
 Kevin Walzer <kw at codebykevin.com> wrote:

> That's decision for each business to make. My guess is that many 
> businesses won't upgrade for some time, until the major 
> libraries/modules support Python 3. I don't plan to move to Python 3 for 
> at least a couple of years.

It takes a long time for big businesses to upgrade.  It's not like me or 
you.  I just download the latest and greatest, run the installer, and 
I'm good to go.

A big company has to install it in a test lab, certify it, get approval 
from IT, log a change request, etc.

You need to get approval from your manager, your director, your VP, and 
so on up the management chain until you finally reach somebody who has 
no clue what's going on and either sits on the request or denies it out 
of ignorance.  Or, more likely, you just hit some middle-management 
layer where the guy doesn't have the authority to approve it himself, 
and isn't willing to expend the political capital it would take to get 
approval from the next layer up.

Somebody might decide they don't want to disturb any existing production 
systems (not a bad idea, really), so you need to order new hardware for 
it.  Even if you can get capital approval for that, it mushrooms into 
finding rack space, and the UPS is already oversubscribed, and so is the 
cooling, and there's no available network ports, and so on.  Suddenly, 
downloading some free software has become a 5-figure project.

Big businesses have lots of ways to ensure that no progress is ever 
made.  If you think any of the above is made up, you've never worked for 
a big company.