Arch Linux drops Python 2

Posted Sep 25, 2022 18:21 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
In reply to: Arch Linux drops Python 2 by gerdesj
Parent article: Arch Linux drops Python 2

> My nascent Civil Engineering career morphed into IT around 30 odd years back. You will have heard of some of my little firm's customers - strange but likely true.

As someone who worked in Civil Engineering, I'm not surprised. MOST big firms actually have precious few employees. Most of the work is done by subcontractors. So yes, I probably have heard of quite a few of your customers ...

Before I moved into the HR world, I worked for Babcocks, Costain, Merlin, ... (that I can remember).

Cheers,
Wol

Arch Linux drops Python 2

Posted Sep 26, 2022 23:20 UTC (Mon) by gerdesj (subscriber, #5446) [Link] (4 responses)

"As someone who worked in Civil Engineering, I'm not surprised. MOST big firms actually have precious few employees. Most of the work is done by subcontractors. So yes, I probably have heard of quite a few of your customers ..."

I never even got that far in civ eng. I graduated in 1991, from Plymouth. I applied to Plymouth Poly, attended Poly South West and a year later it was Uni Plymouth. As you will recall, 1991 was not a good year for building stuff in the UK! I rocked a UB40 for a fair old while. I can still whistle up a decent 1-2-3 mix of conc and some of my garden structures are rather more formally designed and analysed than the usual.

My comment about hearing about my customers is for my very little IT company 8) Two of them are rather global and another one: you (as a Brit) will know well.

My main point about Python devs deprecating P2 is that I think it is behaving in an entitled way to try and insist that P2 be maintained forever. Arch is a great platform to test the waters for the change and give off an indication that it will finally happen across the board.

I only trained to become an engineer but I run my work life by what I learned in a few years. It might be nice to see IT grow up and learn that maintenance is part of the design of a system. Some bloke farting around for Facebook once famously said something along the lines of: "work fast and break things". He might now be a multi zillionaire but perhaps he ought to try painting a bridge. You will know that the Forth rail bridge was famously a job never finished. I believe it is now covered in some sort of plastic - but at least that is a proper solution.

My main problem with complaints about deprecating P2 and actually removing it is "entitlement". Either enjoy a better way to coat your bridge (you might need a new applicator and learn how to use it) or keep your old paints and brushes around - at least you have the recipe for the stuff.

Arch Linux drops Python 2

Posted Sep 27, 2022 9:03 UTC (Tue) by Vipketsh (guest, #134480) [Link] (3 responses)

> insist that P2 be maintained forever

For what it's worth, my "change history" comment was referring to the Python people asking for the 'python' command to mean python3. That closes the door to being able to install python2 (originally what 'python' did) and having things just work. It also leaves no indication to anyone new to the Python world that "oh, this is written in a different Python". This causes pain all around for no reason what so ever. Also their stance towards anyone wanting to maintain python2 (a comment below) is simply hostile.

That is the reality of running big systems: there will always be ancient stuff running for "reasons" requiring weird interpreters and that includes Python2. The right thing to do is to admit this is the case, not close the door to anyone wanting to do "this crazy thing" and accept patches if someone puts in the effort to keep Python2 running in modern environments. See ? I'm not asking for anyone to maintain things, just keep the door open to allow people to do necessary things needed in the real world and not make the problem worse.

I also take big offense when people downplay the work needed to fix breakage and try to sell the millionth incompatibility as "this is absolutely necessary" (a big fat lie). That is real time not spent doing real work and across thousands of projects burning many thousands of man hours. The simple reality is that the Python2->3 transition was not liked by many and thus was simply a bad idea. Instead of admitting that was the case the Python crew seem to just push harder that python2 never in fact happened.

From my point of view actions of the Python people are just asking for bad words to be sent in their direction and just aren't making things better.

> It might be nice to see IT grow up and learn that maintenance is part of the design of a system.

This I very much agree with. Even if your foundations don't change (e.g. if Python2->3 never happened), maintenance is very much required. Of course I think this goes both ways: organisations putting up the money/resources for maintenance but also software understanding their dependents will need to be maintained and thus not unnecessarily making things difficult for them.

Arch Linux drops Python 2

Posted Sep 27, 2022 21:14 UTC (Tue) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link] (2 responses)

> For what it's worth, my "change history" comment was referring to the Python people asking for the 'python' command to mean python3. That closes the door to being able to install python2 (originally what 'python' did) and having things just work. It also leaves no indication to anyone new to the Python world that "oh, this is written in a different Python". This causes pain all around for no reason what so ever. Also their stance towards anyone wanting to maintain python2 (a comment below) is simply hostile.

My attitude towards this is pretty much identical to the attitude that the C standards committee displayed towards IBM, when the latter asked for trigraphs to be kept in the language for backcompat with EBCDIC: Meh, that's your problem. You can do the symlink dance yourself, or configure your sysadmin automation to do it for you.

I don't mean to be rude. I'm simply stating a fact. You cannot rationally expect people who are not on your payroll to do work that you consider necessary. Reviewing patches is not free. Maintaining VCS branches is not free. Compiling interpreter binaries is not free. All of these things require human attention, computing power, or both. While this may not be a lot of work, it's their decision whether they want to do it or not. It should also be emphasized that you can still download Python 2.7 today, if you really want to: https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-2718/

Arch Linux drops Python 2

Posted Sep 27, 2022 22:12 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

> My attitude towards this is pretty much identical to the attitude that the C standards committee displayed towards IBM, when the latter asked for trigraphs to be kept in the language for backcompat with EBCDIC: Meh, that's your problem. You can do the symlink dance yourself, or configure your sysadmin automation to do it for you.

"to be kept" ... in other words, the standards committee was MAKING work for other people. Same here - if people want "python" to *just* *keep* *working*, the python guys are MAKING work for other people.

I get your point - why should the python guys do work for other people. But the point in the other direction is just as valid - why are the Python guys making work for other people?

Cheers,
Wol

Arch Linux drops Python 2

Posted Sep 27, 2022 22:15 UTC (Tue) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link]

An interpreter that contains security flaws doesn't work, for any reasonable interpretation of "work." Therefore, keeping Python working would require one of two things:

1. Python does not implement any security boundaries whatsoever. This entails the removal of quite a lot of the standard library (e.g. all of the HTTP and SSL code), which probably breaks a lot of legacy scripts anyway.
2. Someone patches those flaws when they are found.