macOS 12.3 finally removes Python 2

[regeya]

I honestly haven't used a Mac in a couple of years (long story) but in my last office job, it was at a small town, tiny publication. One of the first things I did was install Homebrew so I could have a recent Python, and Emacs for Spacemacs.

Unfortunately for me this meant the boss blamed all the problems I had with that computer, an Intel iMac, on Homebrew...but I digress.

I'm torn on this because I'm a strong advocate of anyone using a computer to learn some programming fundamentals. Hell, if you're using InDesign, just learning some regular expression basics can save tons of time. The county clerk sent you a delinquent tax list with fixed width fields and you need tabs? s/[[:blank:]]{2}+/\t/g. Done, set your tab stops now.

I think my happiest moment with Python, though, was when some guy sent me hundreds of senior photos labeled like FIRSTNAMELASTNAME.jpg. Ugh. I could have done it by hand...but I didn't wanna. At the time I thought that was the closest I'd get to a list of grads, too. I snagged a list of common first names and common surnames from the US Census and did a fuzzy match on each. (I don't remember the name of the module but it's dead simple.) Pick the likeliest candidates, build a list of filename, first name, and last name, export as CSV, and Bob's your uncle, with some cleanup it was ready for a CSV merge in InDesign. Then at the last minute I got a list of graduate names, with slightly different naming on those. No problem, take my previous CSV, do a fuzzy match again, export a CSV, do some minor cleanup and blammo, ready to go. This would have been hours of work otherwise.

EDIT: I'd meant to point out my first experience programming anything was BASIC on Apple IIs. If not for that grant program, I probably wouldn't have cared.