[Python-Dev] The end of 2.7

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Skip Montanaro writes:

 > It sounds like many people at PyCon are still 2.x users.

I suspect we're all still 2.x users at some level.

But the question is not "where are the users?"  It's "where do the
development resources come from?"  Pretty clearly, the python-dev
crowd has voted with their keyboards.  You don't see a lot of
complaints from committers about this policy.  I gather the general
feeling is that at this point supporting Python 2.x is just work that
somebody else benefits from.

2.x's EOL was discussed in the past (the thread about "why no 2.8?"),
and what we observe is nobody coming forward to maintain Python 2 for
the fun of it.  People not only work on Python 3 for the fun of it,
but they even port packages to Python 3 for the fun of it![1]

 > Where I work [...] it's not like we haven't seen this coming, but
 > you can only justify moving so fast with technology that already
 > works,

But by the same token, you should be able to see quite a ways in
advance when it's going to stop working, and then you can decide how
you want to pay for what you'd been getting for free.

As far as I can see, this is a win-win situation for Python 2 users.
Stick with Python 2, which you get for free and has evolved into a
robust powerful language embedded in a very rich ecosystem of add-on
packages.  It's open source, so you can maintain it yourself if
necessary -- but it mostly *won't* be necessary.  Or migrate to Python
3, which you get for free, is a better language, and whose ecosystem
is advancing at a good clip.  And it is much more fun to work with in
many ways.


Sorry-no-free-ponies-here-ly y'rs,


Footnotes: 
[1]  FVO "fun" including "people who have done me a good turn will be
happy to see this done".