Clear Linux Is The Latest Distribution Figuring Out What To Do With Python 2

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Clear Linux Is The Latest Distribution Figuring Out What To Do With Python 2

While Python 3 has been around now for a decade, most Linux distributions are still working towards moving away from Python 2 and that includes Intel's Clear Linux distribution...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Clear-Linux-Python-Plans

[vegabook]

Python 3 is a total joke. I have (reluctantly) moved only because I've been brute-forced into it by the constant threats and nagging from the Python 3 gestapo.

And there is _nothing_ that I have found that I could not do in Python 2. Asyncio and type hints are just eye rollers.

Also Mac OS is still firmly 2.7 so I reckon the 2 line will still be going strong in a decade. Deprecation or not.

The devs foisted an unwanted set of changes to make Python "grow up", when the whole reason people liked Python was because it wasn't too grown up!

[Vistaus]

The other day, we were discussing Python 2 vs Python 3 and I was told by Phoronix members that every important thing was already ported to Python 3. So if that's true, then shouldn't it be easy for distros to drop Python 2?

[cybertraveler]

The other day, we were discussing Python 2 vs Python 3 and I was told by Phoronix members that every important thing was already ported to Python 3. So if that's true, then shouldn't it be easy for distros to drop Python 2?

There's still a bunch of Python 2 code out there which doesn't run, unmodified on a Python 3 interpreter, so they can't just change the dependencies of lots of Packages from Python 2 to Python 3 without getting lots of broken code.

I think the most conservative and simple choice that distros can make is to decide to not, themselves, be dependent on Python 2. IE they should make sure they're not using Python 2 scripts and programs in their toolchain or the base distro itself.

[arjan_intel]

The other day, we were discussing Python 2 vs Python 3 and I was told by Phoronix members that every important thing was already ported to Python 3. So if that's true, then shouldn't it be easy for distros to drop Python 2?

it's not fundamentally super complex, it's just a lot of small pieces that have cross dependencies, so it ends up being a long and slow dance of mikado.

[schmidtbag]

Python 3 is a total joke. I have (reluctantly) moved only because I've been brute-forced into it by the constant threats and nagging from the Python 3 gestapo.

And there is _nothing_ that I have found that I could not do in Python 2. Asyncio and type hints are just eye rollers.

Gee, I wasn't aware you represented the needs of all Python devs, how fascinating!
Sarcasm aside, how exactly is python 3 a joke? It objectively isn't worse than python 2 (as a whole anyway) and it actually does more than what python 2 can do, due to modern libraries. It's really not difficult to transition your code to python 3 - they even have scripts that do most of the work for you, which in my experience has worked fine.

Also Mac OS is still firmly 2.7 so I reckon the 2 line will still be going strong in a decade. Deprecation or not.

First of all, Mac makes a small marketshare of Python devs, so Python will continue to grow without Apple's "consent". Besides, whether you like it or not, Python 2's EOL is already planned. Second, even if Apple did have an impact on what the industry uses, it's pretty effortless to install Python 3 on a Mac. Lastly, I would not use Apple as an example of what an industry should use. Take OpenGL for example - I don't think they even have 4.3 yet, and instead of the logical choice of adopting Vulkan, they created Metal.

The devs foisted an unwanted set of changes to make Python "grow up", when the whole reason people liked Python was because it wasn't too grown up!

Oh boo-hoo. So you have to use parenthesis with the print command, or use encode()/decode() more often. How "adult"...
Meanwhile, you seem to forget about less grown-up benefits, such as being able to more easily perform divisions without using "from __future__ import division"

[nomadewolf]

From this, it looks like Python 3 is the Windows Vista of the programming languages/scriping/whatever...

[DanL]

From this, it looks like Python 3 is the Windows Vista of the programming languages/scriping/whatever...

So you're saying Python 4 is going to come along and be better (like Win 7)?
Anyway, that's an awful comparison. You shouldn't compare anything to Windows Vista. That's like.. puppies and kittens just died.

EDIT: You don't even want to know what happens when you compare something to Windows ME.

[grigi]

Honestly, Python3 is a great language.
The last of our projects dropped Python2 a year ago (and we have many)

The big pushback was the core developers not understanding what people complained about. They mostly fixed all the issues by Python3.3, but py3.5's type hints and new async keywords, and f-strings in py3.6 really makes it worthwhile to upgrade finally.

Not to mention it really was quite easy to upgrade. You should really just imagine Python3.0-3.2 was just 3 beta releases, so please ignore those.

It is in no way nearly as bad as the PERL6 debacle. That only took 18 years to resolve, and nobody really cares now. Whereas Python is one of the fastest growing languages right now.

[Ray54]

I have been looking at Python again recently with a view to moving to it to write my Linux desktop applications. I have seen tables showing that almost all the common python packages are available for Python 3 and the Python developers are saying "now" is the time for the big move to python 3. However, I know many Python 2 programmers do not see a need to move on to Python 3 yet. This situation makes me reluctant to commit to using Python in general.

I thought that most of the main Linux distributions had already converted their utilities from Python 2 to Python 3 or were in the process of doing so, this of course does not stop them from including both Python 2 and Python 3 interpreters for users (Mint 18.3 has Python 2 version 2.7.12 and Python 3 version 3.5.2).