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Comment by nicoco | Hacker News Reader

For a different perspective, I started using python about 5 years ago, and I never experienced a single breakage due to a new python release. Instead, I'm always excited to read new version releases notes and it's the only thing that may make me move away from debian stable someday. But waiting a few months, using containers, or compiling a newer python is usually fine when I can't wait.

Removing deprecated stuff is… the point of deprecating stuff?

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> Removing deprecated stuff is… the point of deprecating stuff?

The point of deprecating stuff is to redirect to newer/better/saner APIs, not necessarily removing the thing.

This is where I like Java's approach. Stuff is deprecated in the JDK but fairly rarely is it removed. When it is, it's because the feature is either unused or so detrimental to the ecosystem as to warrant removal (see: finalizers).

My experience with Python is probably closer to nicoco's than wakeupcall's (usually pretty painless), but I tend to prefer the Java approach. Waiting three releases for removal gives you four years of support and seven years of security fixes. That isn't unreasonable but feels a little too fast in a language as old as Python (especially with people still burned from Python 3).

Same here. I don't think I've been affected by a single deprecation since upgrading to Python3 in 2015, and even that upgrade wasn't that difficult -- mainly I was just forced to fix a few things I had been doing incorrectly, which imho is a good thing.

You should also look into pyenv if you'd like to install newer versions sooner, outside a container.

I moved to nixpkgs from pyenv about a year ago, with positive results. I think it's worth the initial effort.

5 years is not enough to be experiencing this. The pain is very real and consumes a tremendous amount of effort. I've started writing tools just to create inventories of which packages with which versions I'm using where in order to try to automate the upgrading of virtual environments as much as possible. It's a horrible experience.

The biggest boulder I currently see rolling towards me is the MongoDB driver since I need to upgrade the databases and the drivers can't cope with the latest version.

We have recognised this problem and to that end we have produced a Stable API standard https://www.mongodb.com/docs/manual/reference/stable-api/

I realise this doesn't help you with historical API changes.

If you look for help in the MongoDB community and tag me (Joe.Drumgoole@mongodb.com) I will make sure you get help migrating your app.

https://www.mongodb.com/community/forums/

conda create -n yourenv python=3. 12 ;)

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