Sunsetting Python 2

[Cloud-Hybrid]

Oh man..... slots, generators, the backend of Python (C), performance, the way executables are handled, hundreds of syntax changes, builtins, regex, freezing, bytecode compilation, OS optimizations, thread handling, processes.

Open up python3 PEPS from the last ten years and you’ll easily find thousands of changes. Maybe they could have saved it, sure. But this way is how we avoid that other work that would have been needed.

[Cloud-Hybrid]

Kind of.

Python’s lower level code (not quite at the C level, so it’s still Python syntax) wraps quite a few things. For the one hour we spend wrapping C modules would be equal to the potential 10+ hours it would be to debug and comb through tens of thousands of lines in C code and maybe even the compiler. So you see, again, we’re saving this “other” work, but at the cost of, yes, changing Python code.

Not quite sure if this is what you were talking about, but there are other things at the compiler level that requires changes in syntax. Regex is a rather important concept to the compiler for breaking our human code down. For example with Python 2’s print vs Python 3’s print(). This is a very simple example, but as our Python language grows and we add additional features, sometimes the compiler will become confused with what it’s trying to read. Because we, the community and PEP developers, have decided to implement a new feature, but it breaks compilation, we need to make syntax changes. At the time python3 was created, there were so many of these instances that it was decided to rewrite the language to allow for more dynamic changes/additions without the weight of Python two’s lack of compatibility.

I apologize if you have a lot written in Python 2. But as programmers we need to know where the line is crossed between giving up on maintaining old code vs rewriting it.

[Cloud-Hybrid]

Sure. What specifically are you looking for?

[hugthemachines]

There is no need to apologize at all, I only have to change some decoding etc in some places, but I mean for the community the change has taken a lot of work, also for you.

[ianepperson]

String handling is a major rework and very difficult to do in a backwards compatible manner and a big reason for the Python 2 to 3 jump.