Watson: Launchpad now runs on Python 3

Posted Aug 3, 2021 23:54 UTC (Tue) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325)
In reply to: Watson: Launchpad now runs on Python 3 by khim
Parent article: Watson: Launchpad now runs on Python 3

> Just read an announcement. One example is proudly shown right there: Note: the 2.6 description mentions the format() method for both 8-bit and Unicode strings. In 3.0, only the str type (text strings with Unicode support) supports this method; the bytes type does not. The plan is to eventually make this the only API for string formatting, and to start deprecating the % operator in Python 3.1.
>
> How, pray tell, should I format anything if I'm told not to use % and format doesn't work with real data and % is supposed to be removed?

This problem was fixed in 2014 with PEP 461. Complaining about something that was fixed many years ago is indeed FUD.

Watson: Launchpad now runs on Python 3

Posted Aug 4, 2021 6:28 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

> This problem was fixed in 2014 with PEP 461. Complaining about something that was fixed many years ago is indeed FUD.

Not if we are discussing history. Switch to Python 3 was barely mitigated disaster: it replaced working string model with a broken one and added enough incompatibilities that it took 10 years.

Granted, all three “big P” languages (Perl, PHP and Python) tried to do that and only Python managed to break the developers expectations yet hold the mindshare, but I wonder what would have happened in an alternate history where at least one camp would have tried to evolve language without huge breakages.

Watson: Launchpad now runs on Python 3

Posted Aug 4, 2021 19:08 UTC (Wed) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link] (1 responses)

> Not if we are discussing history. Switch to Python 3 was barely mitigated disaster: it replaced working string model with a broken one and added enough incompatibilities that it took 10 years.

Meh. So what? Python 2 lost support well over a year ago. As far as I'm concerned, this is all ancient history at this point. But every time anyone mentions Python, in any capacity, on LWN (or Hacker News, for that matter), the comments *always* turn into a ridiculous flame war over it.

Look. I get it. The flag day was painful, arguably unnecessary, etc. But what's done is done, and it's clearly not going to happen again. So maybe we can all just take a breath and find something more productive to talk about?

Watson: Launchpad now runs on Python 3

Posted Aug 4, 2021 19:39 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

> Python 2 lost support well over a year ago.

Yup. Means now it's time to think what to do about that mess. Look here, for example

Distributions are starting to remove Python 2 which means that simple solution which worked for years (ignore the Python3 existence and use Python 2) no longer works. Enterprise guys are starting to switch. Some of them. But that saga is still far from being over. When RHEL 8 would go out of support? 2029? Well, I guess by 2030 or so we may declare Python 2 dead and buried then.

> As far as I'm concerned, this is all ancient history at this point.

Sorry but if that's all “ancient history at this point” then why do you even leave comments under article which proves that it's most definitely not an ancient history?

Look on it's title for chrissake! You may try to go away and pretend that it doesn't exist but it's a stupid to pretend that all that pain happened years ago somehow when commenting something that shows that story is still ongoing.

> Look. I get it. The flag day was painful, arguably unnecessary, etc. But what's done is done, and it's clearly not going to happen again. So maybe we can all just take a breath and find something more productive to talk about?

Sure. If that would have been what mb would have said then I would have stopped the discussion. But that's not what happened.

It's a bit like pain if switching from Winows Classic to Windows XP or from Mac Classic to MacOS X. You may say what's “done is done” (and that would be true!) but that still doesn't change the fact that it was painful and unnecessary.

Computer industry is now mature industry. Decades-long deprecation cycles are typical. You can't avoid it.