Using Python 2
Leam Hall
leamhall at gmail.com
Fri Sep 8 10:23:01 EDT 2017
Various responses in no particular order:
On 09/08/2017 09:57 AM, Ned Batchelder wrote:
> I've heard a lot of FUD about the Python 3 transition, but this one is
> new to me. What is it that CompSci folks want that developers don't
> want, that ruined Python 3?
It's not FUD if it's true. Calling it FUD without checking is, um, FUD.
The phrase was "many of the changes in Python 3 are theoretically based,
cleaning up of how Python does things to make them fit with what
Computer Science teaches."
On 09/08/2017 08:51 AM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> Let's see. You can port your code from Python 2.7 to Python 3.6 by
> running a script and then checking the results for bytes/text
> problems.
I ran 2to3 on some code that worked under 2.6.6. and 3.6.2. 2to3 broke
it for both versions and it was a fairly trivial script.
On 09/08/2017 08:42 AM, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
> That's somewhat irrelevant. Point is, Python 2 will quickly become a
> pariah in many corporations during or after 2018, and we are going to
> see emergency measures similar to the Y2K craze twenty years ago.
>
> The risk to Python will be whether the occasion is exploited by
> fanboys of competing programming languages. The migration from
Python2 > might be to something else than Python 3 in some circles.
To me this is where the Python community comes in. Moving 3,000 servers
from RHEL 6 to something that uses Python 3 isn't a trivial task when
most of those servers are not homogenous HPC nodes.
If Python 2 has bugs that aren't going to be fixed, then let's ask the
question. If Python 3 was a total re-write that is not backwards
compatible then it likely has some of the same bugs (due to same coders)
plus new ones. If Python 3 is not a total re-write then why break
compatibility?
To say Python 2 is old is true. What does it matter though? Unless
Python 3 provides a business value for spending lots of time and money
to change then "old" doesn't matter.
You're right that people may migrate to something besides Python. For me
that question is real and some of the fuel is how the community can't
understand that I work on servers that only have an old version of
python. So far one person has answered the original design question.
Everyone else has tried to convince me of something that is financially
and professionally impossible and completely useless.
If you want to encourage people to move from Python 2 to 3 then continue
to help answer questions when they are Python 2 based. Over time an
individuals preference will be to move to Python 3 since 90% of the
skill is already there. From a purely "is python a good language for
many use cases" perspective the answer is yes. Welcome people and let
their task needs and passions drive the change.
Leam
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