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posted by janrinok on Tuesday September 10 2019, @04:26AM   Printer-friendly

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

We are volunteers who make and take care of the Python programming language. We have decided that January 1, 2020, will be the day that we sunset Python 2. That means that we will not improve it anymore after that day, even if someone finds a security problem in it. You should upgrade to Python 3 as soon as you can.

We need to sunset Python 2 so we can help Python users.

We released Python 2.0 in 2000. We realized a few years later that we needed to make big changes to improve Python. So in 2006, we started Python 3.0. Many people did not upgrade, and we did not want to hurt them. So, for many years, we have kept improving and publishing both Python 2 and Python 3.

But this makes it hard to improve Python. There are improvements Python 2 can't handle. And we have less time to work on making Python 3 better and faster.

And if many people keep using Python 2, then that makes it hard for the volunteers who use Python to make software. They can't use the good new things in Python 3 to improve the tools they make.

We did not want to hurt the people using Python 2. So, in 2008, we announced that we would sunset Python 2 in 2015, and asked people to upgrade before then. Some did, but many did not. So, in 2014, we extended that sunset till 2020.

If people find catastrophic security problems in Python 2, or in software written in Python 2, then volunteers will not help you. If you need help with Python 2 software, then volunteers will not help you. You will lose chances to use good tools because they will only run on Python 3, and you will slow down people who depend on you and work with you.


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  • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday September 10 2019, @06:08AM (2 children)

    by krishnoid (1156) on Tuesday September 10 2019, @06:08AM (#892097)

    I wonder if people will just move from Python 2 to something else entirely, or just stick with Python 2.7 and release their own security updates, patches, etc. Also, did Python 3 get rid of the global interpreter lock? Seems like that would be worth the effort for people to break compatibility with existing codebases.

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  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday September 10 2019, @03:06PM (1 child)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Tuesday September 10 2019, @03:06PM (#892229) Journal

    Move to what exactly? Perl 6? C++17? TypeScript or Kotlin? Where is there to go that seems better?

    What is the most painless migration and upgrade you've ever heard of? I can't recall anything that didn't provoke complaining. Something always gets broken. Doesn't matter if the broken stuff was the most awful, kludgy maintenance nightmare ever created and deserved being dropped into the sun and forgotten, someone is unhappy. Even when they stick to fixes and corrections, it's likely someone was abusing a bug, and will be all unhappy the fix broke their shit.

    It's just one of those quirks of human nature. Can't change anything without making someone unhappy. For maximum happiness, have to start fresh. Improving a neighborhood will always spur contention that the improvements were really the opposite. Building a new neighborhood lets all the sourpusses choose between staying in their old neighborhoods, or coming to the new one. Takes the punch out of the complaint that they were coerced. As another poster suggested, maybe the developers shouldn't have even tried to pretend python 3 is just a neighborhood improvement by calling it python, they should have emphasized the newness by using a new name such as Boa. Most of the time, the approach is to make the changes and blow off all the whining.

    • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday September 11 2019, @05:16AM

      by krishnoid (1156) on Wednesday September 11 2019, @05:16AM (#892547)

      I was thinking of a language that targets Android and/or iOS, to provide native access to twice as many devices or more. That at least makes a stronger argument for breaking compatibility than just, "we can't get volunteer-based security fixes on the old stuff".