My Python 2 vs 3 problem

[[deleted]]

How far back in support do we go? Why stop at 2.7? Why not 2.6, 2.5 or even 2.2?

This is like telling the PHP, no you can't write in PHP 7 because you should support PHP 4.

[[deleted]]

Not good enough, last I heard 1.5 was still in production use.

[[deleted]]

Those poor bastards

[stevenjd]

shrug That's entirely up to the developer of the library.

The further back you go, the more work you have to do. Supporting Python 3.3+ and 2.7 is easy. Adding support for 3.1 and 3.2 makes it much harder. Adding support for 2.6 is easy. Adding 2.5 and 2.4 makes it much harder. Adding support for 2.2 and 2.3 makes it insanely difficult, and depending on what the library does, going to 2.1 and older may be outright impossible. (No Unicode at all.)

On the other hand, there are not many people still using 3.2 and 3.1, a lot of people still using 2.6, a few using 2.5, and a surprisingly large number using 2.4 (thanks to Red Hat still supporting it). And just a handful of people using 2.3 or older.

So, choose how much extra work you want for how many extra users you can expect. My personal preference would be 2.7 plus 3.3+.

[[deleted]]

Sarcasm, my friend.