Fedora ponders the Python 2 end game

Posted Aug 2, 2017 23:48 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Fedora ponders the Python 2 end game by drag
Parent article: Fedora ponders the Python 2 end game

Sorry. Thought it would be obvious from the context, but perhaps not. I mean: Mixed programs, in which packages written in Go 2 import packages written in Go 1 and vice versa, must work effortlessly during a transition period of multiple years.

Fortran 90 introduced free-form source input and arrays were redesigned from scratch (and ended up pretty bad: they were designed with Cray CPUs in mind and are not a good fit for modern CPUs) - yet old code could still be compiled with Fortran 2015 compiler! The same with C, C++ and other languages - "old style" is just a switch away and, most importantly, mixed programs, in which packages written in XXX import packages written in YYY and vice versa, must work effortlessly during a transition period of multiple years.

Fortran developers certainly learned from experience (Fortran 77 was not used widely for many years after introduction because it haven't supported some features of old Fortran 66 and thus old modules were not intermixable with new ones), C and C++ developers (and many, many, many others) have learned from it (e.g. Delphi introduced new class-style types and new strings - but old ones were available for years). That fact was certainly well-known to python community - they have just chosen to ignore all that experience.