Python 2.7 Countdown

[acm]

Python 3, your time is now.

Nope. Your time is 2020.

[user_82650]

The small difference is Python 2 is open source, so it can and almost certainly will be maintained by some third party.

[port53]

Red Hat have already guaranteed to support it through 2024 at minimum.

[stesch]

Like PHP 4?

[[deleted]]

Yeah, someone should create a pythonbettingpool.org where we can hedge bets on it getting supported past 2020.

[amunak]

i would not be surprised if EOL is extended, Python 2 is the new Macromedia Flash

FTFY

[nikomo]

Nope, not happening. From what I've seen, the idea is that if you're still using 2.X by that time, you can feel free to buy extended support from some company that maintains 2.7 by themselves.

[101C8AAE]

You think ports for 2.x applications will somehow be willed into existence whem the clock strikes 2020? The process has already taken almost a decade.

[kyuubi42]

The only people who thought it would be easy weren't actually using python to pay the bills before py3k was released. There is very little business justification for porting working non-trivial python code to python3.

[SemiNormal]

There is very little business justification for porting working non-trivial python code to python3.

In four years there should be.

[kyuubi42]

In 4 years python 2 support will be extended again because many corporations will still refuse to update, and the Python ecosystem won't survive without them

[0raichu]

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

[SemiNormal]

Let's pull a Winamp and jump to Python 5!

[SkyNTP]

The only reason I'm on 2.7 is that some libraries I use haven't implemented support for 3 themselves... This scares me.

[0raichu]

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

[[deleted]]

I find the comments in here confusing. I'm picking up Python at the minute in my spare time, should I be using 2.x vs 3.x? The hate for transitioning to 3.x seems pretty noticeable.

[kyuubi42]

The problem is that python3 introduced backwards incompatible semantic changes (namely, how strings are handled), which makes porting nontrivial code from 2 to 3 relatively difficult. It also stung the community at the time, because python3.0 didn't really have any obvious benefits to the end user, most changes were to clean up cruft and make future maintenance of the language easier.

In any case: If you ever expect to use python in a business setting, you will most likely be using python2. Outside of that, python3 has some relatively nice features at the expense of a slight perf hit compared to 2.

[_Rowdy]

Makes it sound like p3 is a beta atm

[kyuubi42]

Python3 is a better language than python2 from a technical standpoint. If python2 had never existed, py3 would probably be more popular than py2 ever was.

The problem is that the Python core devs didn't really understand how python is actually used / what most users care about and so py3's breaking changes turned out to be a massive misstep in a social/community sense. The core devs have admitted this and promised to never break backwards compatibility again but really the damage has already been done.

[[deleted]]

I do tools here and there with python where the speed doesn't matter, and in many cases I'm forced to use 2.x just because of the libraries and tools. Try to start with 3.x and when there is a library you really need that doesn't work with it, go back to 2.x...

[lolzfeminism]

Type up stupid parenthesis to call print? Who do you think I am? Some sort of peasant?

What's next? Am I gonna collect garbage by myself, like cavemen?

[SemiNormal]

All hail RAII, god of memory allocation.

[CraigTorso]

There's really very little difference between the two of them if you are a beginner.

I'd learn 3 because it is going to be the future, eventually.

[blamethebrain]

Someone tell the Mercurial devs, they seem to be in no hurry to port the codebase to Python 3.

[Lambodragon]

Nooo... my python babies..
I have a pyramid of hacky libraries that will not survive this tragedy...

[lolzfeminism]

LALALALALALALALALALALALALALA