Python discusses deprecations

The processor is capable of it (what doesn't work is real mode, "unreal" mode (i.e. real mode with nonstandard selectors), and v8086 mode). But it does take more work to implement this, mostly due to having to mess about with LDTs some more in ways you don't have to do if all you support is 32-bit protected mode programs. I can entirely believe that MS didn't want to do that.

I've tried it both ways, and I would say that it's easier to work with 16-bit apps running "rootless" via otvdm (even if the CPU is emulated) than inside a DOSBox frame running Windows 3.11. I never was able to get the emulated mouse working reliably, for example, though that probably had something to do with the fact that DOSBox was running on a remote system accessed via Remote Desktop, so it was turning relative mouse events into absolute "tablet" events and then back to mouse events. In any case, while the app did run in DOSBox it was basically unusable for my purpose. With otvdm all the inputs worked normally, the window size wasn't limited, and I could easily access files on both local and mapped network drives (albeit with truncated names).

Any modern 64-bit CPU should be fully capable of emulating the 16-bit environment the app was originally designed for at better than native speed, even without hardware support, so that isn't much of a handicap.

That's capitalism.

> Such an attitude will even drive away geek users; there's at least one user commenting on this article pointing out this is why they're using Go instead of Python,

Exactly. Vote with your wallet. Don't complain about X failing to meet your needs when you could just use Y instead of X.

> comments on this thread have said that Python 2 was ANSI C and thus should still compile; surely the fact that ANSI C was stable and universal was part of the reason Python 2 was written in it.

Sounds to me like Guido was already practicing this even back then.

> At a more values-based level, this feels like digital vandalism.

Nothing has been destroyed, at least on the FOSS side of things. All of the code still exists, is still publicly accessible, and can still be used, if you can only get it to run. Characterizing that as "vandalism" is ridiculous. If you can't get the code to run, that's your problem. This is the social contract on which all FOSS code has been founded ever since the FSF stuck a "THERE IS NO WARRANTY" disclaimer on the GPL.

> where code has to be rewritten regularly, not because it wasn't good, but because people decided to make some arbitrary changes, where everyone has to learn everything anew on a regular basis.

Unfortunately, we live in a society. If those changes were completely worthless, they would hopefully not be made. In most cases, they at least accomplish *something,* even if you personally think that thing is not worthwhile. You're always free to fork and revert, if you really think it's bad enough.