On Wed, 28 May 2014 14:58:05 -0500, Larry Martell wrote: > On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 2:49 PM, Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> > wrote: > >> Larry Martell <larry.mart...@gmail.com> writes: >> > Somthing I came across in my travels through the ether: >> > [1]https://medium.com/@deliciousrobots/5d2ad703365d/ >> >> "Python 3 can revive Python" https://medium.com/p/2a7af4788b10 >> long HN comment thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7801834 >> >> "Python 3 is fine" http://sealedabstract.com/rants/python-3-is-fine/ >> >> OT: wow that medium site is obnoxious. >> >> > No company that I work for is using python 3 - they just have too much > of an investment in a python 2 code base to switch. I'm just saying.
Is that Python 2 code base aimed at Python 2.7 or 2.6? Or 2.5? Or 2.4? Or even 2.3? Or all of the above? One of the most pernicious myths about this is that there is one single Python 2 ecosystem. There isn't. The company I work for is stuck with 2.6 for the foreseeable future, because that's the version of Python provided by the OS of choice. I recently migrated a client's code base from 2.3 to 2.6, and they will likely stay with 2.6 forever. And I know of at least one company who is using Python 1.5 (yes, 1.5) and have no plans to migrate. 1.5 works for them, and they apparently don't need or don't care about security updates, so why should they migrate? This is all good. If 2.x works for your application, and you don't care about all the awesome new features in 3.3+, don't care about bug fixes and security updates, and don't mind being stuck with a version of Python that will slowly but surely become more and more obsolete, more power to you. The Python core developers have recent committed to providing security updates for 2.7 until 2020. And Redhat have paid support for 2.7 until 2023. So there's no rush. But anyone who makes that decision to stay with 2.x forever is in the same position as those who stay with 1.5 forever. Eventually, you'll have no OS support, no vendor support, no security updates, no bug fixes, it will become harder and harder to find programmers who know that particular version of the language, and even harder to find third party libraries that support it, training new staff in the obsolete version will be hard because all the books and tutorials will be written for more recent versions... My prediction is: - over the next three or four years, there will be a steady trickle of people complaining about Python 3, slowly fading as more people move to Python 3; - when the main Linux distros start using Python 3 as their system Python, there will be a sudden rush of people to Python 3; - about six months before Python 2 drops out of free support, there will be a sudden flood of panicky cries for help from people who didn't bother making a *single* step towards migration over the previous ten years, and suddenly realise that they need to migrate yesterday. -- Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list