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Comment by diminoten | Hacker News Reader

Because of the luddites at RedHat, Python2.7 isn't actually dead until 2024. It's infuriating.

https://access.redhat.com/solutions/4455511

It's almost as if the Python Software Foundation isn't capable of killing the Python 2 language unilaterally without the Python community's consent.

It’s a business play. If companies don’t want to move off 2.x and are willing to pay a Software vendor to backport security fixes so that they can CYA, so be it.

Easy. Don't buy products that are obviously still using python2. Problem should solve itself in some time. Hard to tell sometimes, but looking at dependencies and plugin languages is a good way.

The only software I've written in Python that's been sold was written against 2.5 and has long been out of my control. We sold the source to the sole client (was a financial services migration tool for a very specific domain during a joint venture; I can't divulge anymore).

I know longer work at the company, but i'd wager that the client wouldnt have been willing to pay $500/hr (the rate my company billed me out at for support, features, etc), 10 years ago, to have me port the app and the handful of 3rd party dependencies to Python 3.

Moving from 2 to 3 took a while. I moved once the libs I used moved. For an "app" developer, the migration was easy once my dependencies were ready. Most of the changes were straightforward. The print statement becoming a function was easy. str becoming Unicode and introducing bytes has been a headache. Still having issues time to time with text encoding, especially with encoded text dealing with SQL Server (looking at the default CP-1252 for US English). Another one that still trips me up is is needing a "newline=''" argument when opening as CSV file.

That said, I love Python 3. Ita mostly about forgetting/relearning old syntax, which is going to happen for anything youve been using for decades and undergoes a significant change. I started with Python over 15 years ago, at version 2.2, for reference.

what is your take w.r.t to other backend languages if you have worked with any?

Forunately, tauthon is a community-supported fork of Python 2.7 so that we may continue using the best version indefinitely.

You'll be laughed out of future interviews if you mention your interest in that project.

Some people use software as a tool and aren't zealots about versions or constantly chasing updates.

Yeah, and even those people would snort derisively at a project designed to keep 2.7 alive like this.

"Getting shit done" doesn't happen if you can't move forward eventually. I'd have substantial concerns hiring someone who can't get over Python 2.7.

I think it's less that someone "can't get over Python 2.7" and more "why should I?". Nothing in 3 except bytes/string handling is compelling. Lots of 2 libraries haven't been ported. There is no legal reason to move and no other time pressure.

I would argue that people have been "getting shit done" with C for decades, despite newer shinier flavors of the month popping up, so your argument doesn't hold water to me.

If you want other people to make a change then it's on you to make a convincing argument for why the new thing is an improvement, not just go on tirades about how people should get with the times.

Personally, I lost faith in the Python core team because of the Py3 migration. Yes, 3.x now has a bunch of nice features that 2.x did, but almost none of them actually depend on the 3.0's breakage (as proven by Tauthon).

If you want people to follow you through a break-the-world migration then you need to motivate why it is needed and why it couldn't be done incrementally, not try tempt them with a bunch of unrelated carrots that are bundled together with the breaking change.

I've done that; this isn't the first time I've talked about this problem. HN is not a safe space, there is no room to convince anyone of anything on here, so tirades are all that's left.

We're well past your argument. It's been 11 years, it is no longer reasonable to hold your particular grudge. Get on board with the modern Python or get the hell out of the conversation.

> If you want people to follow you through a break-the-world migration then you need to motivate why it is needed and why it couldn't be done incrementally

They did. I remember looking through this, and I remain convinced that the core developers were correct and there was no way to fix Unicode handling incrementally.

Add the u-sigil for unicode (as they did), add the b-sigil for bytestrings (as they eventually did), and then go through a regular deprecation cycle for sigil-less strings (rather than releasing a 3.0 where the u-sigils were removed completely). Maybe at some point re-add sigil-less strings as an alias for u-strings, but I'd rather have old stuff break with a clear message than have a bunch of weird side bugs.

Do the same for the type names.

the emotional content outweighs the objective situation here; also humorous since Luddites are commonly misunderstood per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

Not misunderstood; luddites (lowercase l, or at least the generalized form) means something different than Luddites (capitalized L).

I'm fairly certain the lowercase l version is the same, but the Luddites are remembered as being ant technology, not pro labour.

A luddite, generally, is one who is anti-technology. A Luddite, specifically, is a member of a 19th century movement to prevent automation from taking their job.

It's insanely pedantic to try and point out the difference, given the ease with which one can find the generic definition.

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