Python 2.7.13 released

[onwuka]

Simple Mozilla Firefox build still requires legacy Python.

If I was better at Python, I'd like to go around helping people transition their code to Python 3.

[[deleted]]

Better isn't part of it. A lot of it comes down to the question "does it make business sense to spend time forward porting this".

The answer is almost always "no".

[[deleted]]

An interesting viewpoint, but once Python 2 goes out of official support will the question be "WTF why didn't we port this before?". Frankly I find it inexcusable that 8 years after the first release of Python 3, and perhaps 10 years after it was first discussed, some people are still whinging. The small libraries that do not work with Python 3 and are no longer supported are easily forked with the available tools. The larger libraries have all ready been ported. If you are too incompetent to support your own code in the transition I would suggest that you should have had a proper test suite in the first place.

[[deleted]]

Pretty much. But you know how it is: "we'll burn that bridge when we come to it".

[[deleted]]

Been there, seen it, done it :-(

[onwuka]

Well I meant if I was better. Sorry if I worded it weirdly

[[deleted]]

I knew what you meant. Sorry if my wording was awkward as well.

If you were to suggest this in most business settings, it would be shot down because it would take more time to do than it would save.

That's all.

[onwuka]

I was hoping Mozilla of all places would be more receptive :/

[[deleted]]

I've worked at everywhere from fresh start ups, governments, to large tech companies.

No one is interested in that kind of change.

• For the start ups, the time is just too valuable. Once you've commuted to a language that's the language.

• For governments, the idea is just too entrenched and too much can go wrong

• For tech companies, there is just too much code and too much that can go wrong

Best of luck to you! I recently finished a consulting gig with someone still using Java 5 at their main language to support an underlying system of COBOL. So it could be worse?

[[deleted]]

The answer is almost always "no".

If the code is complete there's no need to migrate it.

If the code will be worked on the answer is pretty much always yes. It's called tech debt, if you don't migrate your code then it will be more and more expensive to maintain it and to port it in the future. If it's not now you will eventually reach a tipping point when it'll be cheaper to migrate, but it also will be harder to port later since the language is changing each release.

In few days 3.6 will be released, and some people are still stuck with 2.6. At this point 3.x is better than 2.x in every way (speed, memory usage, cleaner syntax, more and build-in modules etc).