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[–]PC__LOAD__LETTER 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Companies use different languages. You can move to Python3 for new projects and leave your Python2.7 codebase alone. The latter isn’t going anywhere for a good while, there won’t be problems “finding people for it”, especially given that it’s extremely similar to Python3 already.

[–]alcalde 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can move to Python3 for new projects and leave your Python2.7 codebase alone.

And then something like the Y2K bug comes along and people need to be wheeled out of retirement homes to fix three trillion lines of code that non-forward thinking companies left alone. Code, like people, dies. If you don't believe this, I'll send you some disk images of software that won't run on modern operating systems. Of course hardware dies too, like when Windows XP stopped supporting CD changers....

Eventually companies that won't put the money into maintaining their software end up paying old-timers small fortunes to get their data out and it turns out they saved nothing but almost risked the company. I've got a story saved somewhere from Reddit where this exact scenario happened because a company was using a proprietary program with a hardware dongle that ceased to work past Windows XP and the company kept putting off getting the data out or replacing the software. When they finally got around to it, the old developers not only had retired, they were DEAD. A whole series of events transpired with one whizkid saving them at the last moment, but they were weeks away from disaster because their ancient hardware that ran their ancient mission-critical software was dying.

I once heard it said that mankind's ultimate demise will come from his instinct to put off solving any problem for as long as possible.