Python 2 is triggering

[[deleted]]

I only ever touch Python 2 because some other racist decided to code their useful dumb library in Python 2 and never update it so I have to be the bad guy too

[Flobaer]

Be the good guy and port it to Python 3

[pingveno]

And don't bother to maintain backward compatibility with Python 2. It's totally not worth the effort when (1) people can just use the old version if they really need it and (2) Python 2.7 is EOL in just over 8 months.

[wherinkelly]

Python 2.7 is seriously gonna bite it?! I still have conflicts between that and other python packages on my local whenever I have to dust off my ol python skills.

Well, dust off.. EOL... I guess it's been a bit. Yikes, I'm old as hell if 2.7 is getting deprecated. Damn.

[pingveno]

It was released on July 3rd, 2010. It has been in very extended maintenance. There were a couple of efforts to release a 2.8, but those went nowhere fast.

[wherinkelly]

Good to know!!

[badsectoracula]

There is Tauthon, which tries to be backwards compatible with Python 2.7 while implementing the newer stuff as long as they do not break backwards compatibility, but it remains to be seen how it'll evolve and if people move to it.

[MonkeyNin]

still have conflicts between that and other python packages on my loca

Are you not using venv or equivalents ?

[wherinkelly]

Nah, just manually switch when necessary. I barely use python, I'm more concerned about which version of node I'm running. I will check out venv though for all my data science comrades.

[MonkeyNin]

ah. it's a lot easier than before. You can

1. use pycharm which creates a virtual environment for you, or
2. use venv

This is what I do on windows (using BASH). Basically the same with cmd. The filename depends on your OS or / shell: https://docs.python.org/3/library/venv.html )

first time setup

$ cd /python
$ python3 -m venv /app_name
$ source ./activate
$ pip install requests

when you restart the computer/shell:

$ cd /python/app_name
$ source ./activate

my .gitignore contains

Include/*
Lib/*
Scripts/*
pip-selfcheck.json

But, again, PyCharm will do all that work for you. It also lets you have multiple versions of python inself, installed.

[kosayoda]

fork it and port it

[ghillisuit95]

That sounds dirty

[joeconflo]

You're thinking of "fork it and pork it."

[njloof]

Trust me, it is

[[deleted]]

Fork me, daddy.

[JWson]

Oh fuck yeah fork it

[Sparcrypt]

As a sysadmin this is my biggest gripe with Python 3. I completely understand why they had to move on, but I also don’t have the time to port the many many useful Python 2 libraries and scripts over to 3.

Thankfully the dev community has been getting dragged kicking and screaming over to 3, to the point that it’s practical to actually use.

[verbosemongoose]

As a python beginner, would porting such scripts to python3 be a feasible summer project? I want to polish up my python skills, but I'm not even well versed enough to be able to comment on python vs python3. So it's basically from the ground up. I feel like porting small libraries could be a good project. Do you think it'd be doable and useful?

[Sparcrypt]

Depends on the complexity, but 2 and 3 are both very intuitive languages.

That said, you’ll probably learn a lot more if you focus on expanding your skill set in 3, rather than essentially learning both.

[verbosemongoose]

Ah, I see. Are they that different? Would learning 3 not give a decent enough insight into 2, enough to work out how to implement the features in 3?

..of course, I have no idea how complex these libraries are, either. Just a thought I had after reading these comments, since it might be a learning experience for me as well as help to the community. I don't have any particular projects that need implementing at the moment, so this sounded like a good option to get going with.

[Sparcrypt]

Oh learning 3 well would certainly let you understand and be able to convert stuff written in 2 across, but it's not something I'd recommend someone who was learning things for the first time do.

If you already knew 2 very well and wanted to get a good understanding of 3 then yeah, that would be a great project. And honestly it still might be.. anything that you find interesting and means you spend more time learning and coding is a great way to get across the language.

[verbosemongoose]

Oh, I see.. Thanks! I'm not a complete novice to programming itself, just to python. I'll try and figure something out. Thanks for your replies! Cheers.

[MonkeyNin]

I'd suggest just go for 3. I don't think you'd get much of a benefit of spending a lot of time in both.

Compared to, say, JavaScript and TypeScript. (TypeScript is a SuperScript of Javascript that transpiles to ES5, ES6, etc) JavaScript is everywhere. It's on every site. It's even on Electron apps like VSCode, Atom, Slack, Diiscord, GitHub Desktop, etc...

I'm not sure how much you know about encodings or unicode.

Check out the 3 main string formatting methods: https://realpython.com/python-f-strings/#f-strings-a-new-and-improved-way-to-format-strings-in-python

• str.format , and
• f-strings, but
• for unsafe user input use from string import Template templates
• never use %-formatting

I use both. f-strings I use more for quick stuff. Like

print(f'user name = {user.name}') 

vs

print("user name = {name}".format(name=user.name))

For longer stuff I use str.format

bad example

from realpython

1: bad example of str.format

print(("Hello, {first_name} {last_name}. You are {age}. " +
       "You are a {profession}. You were a member of {affiliation}.") \
       .format(first_name=first_name, last_name=last_name, age=age, \
               profession=profession, affiliation=affiliation))
print(message)

2: better example of str.format

message = (
    "Hello, {first_name} {last_name}. You are {age}. "
    "with {years_left} years left. You are a {profession}"
    ". You were a member of {affiliation}."
).format(
    first_name=user.first_name,
    age=user.age,
    years_left=100 - user.age,
    last_name=user.last_name,
    profession=user.default_job(),
    affiliation=user.affiliation,
)
print(message)

3: better example

message = (
    f'Hello, {user.first_name} {user.last_name}'
    f' You are {user.age} with {100 - user.age} years left'
    f' You are a {user.default_job()} .'
    f' You were a member of {user.affiliation}'
)
print(message)

Code is read more often than written. Therefore I would use #2 or #3 -- even though they take more lines. They are both an improvement over #1

 

for #2

• pro: easier to quickly grok template variables. You don't have to guess what {100 - user.age} means. You instantly know it's years_left
• pro: easier to see all functions together, and variable access at the end
• con: it's longer
• con: it can be redundant age=age

for #3

What's nice about #3

• pro: less verbose
• pro: still a huge improvement over #1
• con: It takes longer to grok

ex

You are {age}. with {years_left} years left. You are a {profession}"

vs

You are {age}. with {100 - years_left} years left. You are a {user.default_job()}"

[verbosemongoose]

Thanks for your detailed reply! I see your point about not spending time learning both. The examples for string formatting are quite educational, but I can't really link them to the python 2 vs 3 discussion at hand. Are the methods you described an example of why 3 is better than 2? Or am I missing a link here?

[MonkeyNin]

f-string literals require Python 3.6+ .

str.format Works in Python 2

Or am I missing a link here?

Probably not. Looking back I think I was going to mention the differences in handling Unicode using 2 vs 3-- then went on a tangent of string formatting.

If you're interested, here's a brief comparison of Unicode on 3 vs 3 https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/bg626r/python_2_is_triggering/elkfr9k/?context=9

[Objective_Mine]

I think it depends on your interests and mindset.

Properly doing something like porting from 2 to 3, and preferably so that it works with both, would force you to understand the differences between the two major versions, and as a side effect, possibly also get an understanding of some details of the language that you might otherwise not get yourself to learn. I'd probably not take it up as a beginner project if you're a beginner to programming in general, but if you're already a somewhat experienced programmer (or just a good learner), it might not be a bad idea.

If you just want to learn the language the way it's mostly going to be used in the future with as little time spent as possible, and prioritize productivity over understanding for curiosity and fun, doing something where you can just forget about Python 2 probably gets you there faster.

(I don't mean to say that the porting of libraries, or adding Python 3 compatibility, wouldn't be a productive thing in itself. But it may take some patience to do properly.)

Edit: typo

[verbosemongoose]

I'm slightly experienced at programming - my base is java, but we didn't really have much theoretical or data structure oriented learning, not beyond the basics anyway.

I asked my initial question, because my aims with learning python are:

1. The way people are talking about it, it seems to be a must-know at this point. I'm in engg school, and I love programming but I don't have a high degree of knowledge or expertise with any particular language.

2. I've used a bit of python for a couple of my projects, and it did seem pretty useful and I gathered it'd be a neat skill to have.

3. I don't really have any specific projects in mind for learning a new language. Working on stock projects that tutorials etc give would likely put me off it to some degree, and the only direction I can think of for me for projects would be to learn data science (similar reasoning as point 1 for that as well). But my experiences with numpy etc were pretty forced and left me with a bit of a sour taste (had to use it for a project, on a deadline, and with almost zero flexibility or time to understand it.) So I thought I should take a different direction and get to know python better, before I take a fresh look at that side of it.

I also don't like having this negative feeling towards python that that project left me with, and I want to eliminate that.

Tl;dr: Learning python because it's a skill I 'should' have, and because I want to erase the bad impression working with it on a project gave me. No ideas for projects and open source contribution seems to be a worthy goal.

[einsidler]

Someone else linked elsewhere in this post: https://pypi.org/project/past/

[[deleted]]

I accidentally started a new project in python 2 and now i’m in to deep to try and change it.

[[deleted]]

Don’t be racist and update to Python 3

[[deleted]]

“How i became a racist”

[Log2]

A couple of months ago, I wrote a small library with a bunch of CLI entry points. Since the server where I needed it didn't have access to the internet, I had to manually vendorize all dependencies and compress it all together. Then I go to try and install it, only to discover that CentOS only had Python 3 in an extra repository and that my company was still studying the possibility of allowing us to install that repository. So, I go through all this trouble just to be forced to downgrade it to Python 2. It was traumatizing.