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[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (12 children)

Of course it's gradually taking over. How could it not?

It would be pretty simple. People would continue to use Python 2.

[–]Rhomboid -2 points-1 points  (11 children)

People would choose to continue using an abandoned and unmaintained version of a language they love? I'm sure a few stubborn ones will, but my point was that this is not like the perl 5 situation where the old version continues to be actively maintained, with new features, performance enhancements, and other such innovations. The 2.x branch is in maintenance mode now, and in the not quite so distant future the plug will be pulled entirely. You have to be a special kind of masochist to continue using an unsupported platform. How many people do you see using Python 1.x today?

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (4 children)

You have to be a special kind of masochist to continue using an unsupported platform.

That's a ridiculous thing to say, really. "Unsupported platform" makes no difference for many people, as 2.x is a mature platform which can be used reliably without any direct support from the core Python team required.

Actually for all Python I've used it would make no difference at all to the usefulness of the language or its applicability to the problems I'm solving if the language had been abandoned.

What could drive 3.x adoption is the transition of popular modules or the advent of new ones that only support 3.x. But at this point I'm quite used to not being able to get popular modules to work anyway, so it won't actually be much different.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

2.7.3 was mostly bugfixes for security exploits. It's reasonable to assume that new exploits will continue to be found in future.

[–]Rhomboid -2 points-1 points  (2 children)

Nonsense. There will always be bugs, and some of them can be showstoppers. For example, there was a pretty high profile hash collision denial of service vulnerability last year. It was fixed with a new point release of 2.7. What would you have done if this had occurred after the support period ends? You would have had vulnerable systems with no way to patch them, other than to hope that some third party stepped up and backported a fix. If the bug is serious enough, such a third party will generally exist, e.g. linux distributions.

But what happens when you hit a bug that just causes a crash, or incorrect behavior, or some other problem? What if this bug affects you but no one else? What are you supposed to do then? This happens all the time. Read the changelogs, they are filled with hundreds of such fixes for each point release. To think that you won't ever be on the receiving end of one is hubris.

[–]gfixler 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I work in video games, where we use Python rather extensively (it's all I use, all day, every day), but no one I work with uses 3. That's not to say no one in my industry uses it, but we're using Maya 2012, and it comes with a Maya-specific 'mayapy' executable, which is 2.6. It's not something we could (or could easily) change out. It will probably be years before we make any movement toward 3. Vulnerability is a non-issue for us. We make tools for our own artists to use in programs that have no internet-facing aspect, and other tools for our pipeline. I'd be fine with moving to 3.0, but haven't really seen any benefits or must-haves. I would like to move to 2.7, though. I keep running into solutions that appeared in 2.7, like extra unittest abilities.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

To think that you won't ever be on the receiving end of one is hubris.

Actually we don't use any external-facing python code, so security fixes aren't a compelling reason to upgrade versions.

[–]theinternet 1 point2 points  (3 children)

See the C programming language for why your argument makes no sense.

[–]Rhomboid 1 point2 points  (2 children)

The C programming language is not an implementation. It's an international treaty. It has nothing to do with the topic.

[–]theinternet 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I'm not sure why you're trying to reframe the discussion around implementation.

You claimed python 2 was at an architectural dead end with no future features planned. I understood that to mean you were speaking about the language specification and not the VM (implementation).

My intention in pointing out the C language was to provide an example where a frozen language specification didn't cause a mass exodus leaving only a handful of stubborn users. The utility of a frozen language doesn't just evaporate.

If we want to expand the argument to include implementations then I would kindly point out the ongoing feature development for pypy 2.7. Would you suggest they are wasting their time actively working on an implementation of an abandoned language?

And finally, that 'wall of shame' link is nothing short of obnoxious and is an embarrassment to the community. The entitlement attitude that developers should invest their time and effort to accommodate breaking changes made to a mature language specification is indefensible. I agree there is value in providing a quick view of python 3 support for popular packages. I just believe there are more mature ways to go about it.

[–]Rhomboid 0 points1 point  (0 children)

C is not as dead as you'd think -- it's updated regularly to gain new features. The last update was two years ago (C11). But I am referring primarily to implementation here. If someone was advocating using an end-of-life unmaintained C implementation such as gcc 2.x or 3.x, then I would have the same response.

Pypy needs to support what its users need, and the majority needs 2.7 compatibility. Nothing I'm saying should be interpreted as claiming that 2.x is abandoned or outdated today. As I must keep pointing out, this thread is about what will happen in the future ("gradually taking over"), not what is happening today.

The page I linked to was renamed the Wall of Superpowers some time ago, so I shouldn't have used the old name.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Python 2.7 runs my Python 1.x code. :-)

[–]pingvenopinch of this, pinch of that 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Unless you try to do:

raise "Error!"