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Comment by scrollaway | Hacker News Reader

My main issue with lambda so far has been its lack of Python 3 support. I do not understand why there isn't a 3.x runtime available. We have a 3.5 compatible app with parts that depend on 3.4, and we had to cut it in two and cripple it to make it work with lambda.

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I've heard that the foot-dragging on Python is due to the senior technologist at AWS not liking the language and/or not taking it seriously.

Anyone else heard the same?

They upgraded their Node runtime from the legacy 0.10 to 4.2LTS... I'm having a hard time imagining a reason to hate Python that doesn't also apply to Node. Lack of a JIT? (It would be awesome to have Lambda + PyPy + 3.5... though that is of course not yet ready on the PyPy side.)

While I can't say I know anything more about python and aws specifically, hate doesn't have to be logical.

Someone might hate python just because.

Lambda can run arbitrary executables, including a Python3.5 interpreter. Admittedly it's a little silly to have a Py2 script that does nothing but start up Py3, but it's better than cutting and crippling, I'd bet.

> Lambda can run arbitrary executables

Linux executables.

During re:Invent 2015 there was talk about supporting a windows runtime environment.

Well if it can run arbitrary executables, it can run Wine!

What is the definition of "Linux executable" that excludes `python3`? Builtins?

???

Arbitrary Executables = Arbitrary Linux Executables.

Since Python3 runs on linux, you can invoke python3 scripts.

Oh, sorry, I agree. I thought you were disagreeing with parent; saying "it doesn't run arbitrary executables, it only runs linux executables".

Although actually, I see what you mean now. D'oh. Windows was so far out of my mind I wasn't even thinking of it as a distinction to be made.

Yeah, that's the biggest problem. It's bugs me too. I'm sure it is coming soon, but the again, most of the big hosted python installs don't support 3.x yet (App engine being the big one).

App engine has 3.4 on their beta flavor right?

But yes in 2016 everyone needs day 1 Python 3 support. Python 2 support is optional.

Obviously that is not the case.

Why not?

I can't image rolling out a new python hosting product in 2016 and not even covering python3 ?!?!?

I don't know why you would say that. I'm sure it would be great to support Python 3, but saying that Python 2 is optional is a little strange.

It's easier to make Python 2 code run on Python 3 than Python 3 code run on 2. Why shouldn't Python 2 be optional at this point? It's the version in maintenance-only mode. Python 2 is the VB6 of Python and it seems clear to me that it should be optional going forward for people spending support time on it.

As much as I'd like everybody to be using Python 3, the truth is there's not a lot of immediate benefits, which is why 85% of Python users are still using 2.x.

As a Python user myself, the better, more reliable Unicode-by-default string handling in Python 3 is more than enough of an immediate benefit that I've stopped installing Python 2.x on my devices entirely at this point. Obviously, ymmv, but there seem to me to be a lot of immediate benefits to Python users and what feet dragging remains to stay in 2.x seems more like a political protest of some sort than one focused on actual benefits.

This isn't the thread for that debate, so I'll refrain from a specific response, other than to note that python2 has clearly not been replaced by python3, whatever the language's maintainers wish had happened.

You phrase that as if the language maintainers are the antagonist here. At that point, why continue using a language if you don't agree with the direction the language maintainers believe to be the language's present state? Why would you expect hosting companies (such as Amazon in this example) to necessarily pay support costs to continue hosting a deprecated version of a language side by side with the current version?

So yes, it seems to me that from the standpoint of a hosting company like Amazon for example, Python 2 should be the option for them to host, should not be guaranteed, and maybe even shouldn't cost the same as Python 3 moving forward. That's the present of the language. You are asking them to support the past of the language. Perhaps you should be willing to pay for them to support the past of the language.

(Of course, this particular example is moot because it sounds like Amazon themselves have engineers in the "Python 2 or Die" clade, but it's the example at hand.)

This is why Python 2 isn't optional yet:

http://py3readiness.org/

Of the top 360 libraries, only 332 of them support Python 3 (but almost all of them still support Python 2).

This analysis was done in March and expected even support for Python 3 and 2 around now:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/pythonengineering/2016/03/0...

So maybe next year it will be optional, but not yet.

I am fine with supporting both, but if you are only going to do one - pick the way forward.

The more people that say "no python 2" the sooner it will die.

I don't know, python2vs3 thing is weird. Bet someone has a good book on it.

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