[TriLUG] Broad question

[William Sutton via TriLUG]

As a polite sort of response:

1. I understand major version upgrades sometimes breaking things, but my 
understanding is (was?) that part of the Python-2 --> Python-3 breakage 
came because they relinked the unversioned python binary name to whichever 
was most recent.
2. Perl 6.  I hang out on the Libera IRC #perl chat.  Of course there are 
people (including that channel) that use Perl 6, but for most purposes, 
Perl 5 and Perl 6 are two completely different languages.  Use whichever 
makes you happy, but understand that Perl 6 really isn't a direct Perl 
successor ... it's more of "inspired by and revised from".
3. Back to breakage:  you can laugh at people not taking the apparently 
generous 9 year grace period with extensions to re-write code.  As a 
former software engineer, I can tell you that nobody wants to rewrite 
extensive amounts of code (and re-test it) unless they absolutely have 
to... especially given that the day to day work of ongoing bug fixes and 
software enhancements doesn't let up just because someone thinks you need 
to change your code to be compatible with the new way of doing things. 
That's impractical, and why people resist it so much.  I blame the Python 
maintainers for that decision.

On a more humorous note, for those inclined to programming language 
discussions, see "How to save the princess in 8 programming languages":

https://toggl.com/blog/save-princess-8-programming-languages

William Sutton

On Sun, 3 Sep 2023, Steve Litt via TriLUG wrote:

> Stephen P. Schaefer via TriLUG said on Sat, 02 Sep 2023 21:53:05 -0400
>
>> My experience with Python is that its ecosystem introduces breaking
>> changes every half dozen years or so, whereas perl 5 code from the
>> 1990s just works.  Maybe I just got lucky with the perl modules I
>> experienced.  As for readability, I tried finding a bug in the Red
>> Hat/CentOS subscription-manager python code once (wasn't accepting our
>> internal certificate authority when communicating with Foreman (if it
>> had been Satellite it would have been Red Hat's problem)), and I was
>> not enthused.   Python's churn may be good for keeping one
>> employed.....
>
> Python got a real black eye in the Py2 to Py3 switch, and I think the
> black eye was undeserved. First of all, the changes that broke things
> were minor, mostly related to print changing from a statement to a
> function, which in my opinion is much better. There were some problems
> with non-English UTF-8, because Python2 handled it wrong (UTF-8 was
> bolted onto 2.x hence done the wrong way). People issued workarounds to
> make Python 2.x do UTF-8 correctly, and Python 3 broke those
> workarounds. If the original incorporation of those workarounds were
> done in a sane manner, they could easily be found and changed.
>
> Second, they started deprecating Python in 2006 anticipating an end
> date of 2015. Most developers didn't have the guts to port their
> applications in the *9 years* alotted, so then they extended the end
> date to 2020. Considering how little work was required to change a
> Python2 to Python3 file, I think this is plenty of time. People just
> didn't switch until the bitter end. Developers could have easily
> switched years earlier.
>
> Third, by importing things from __future__ in Python2, they could make
> much of their Python2 Python3 compatible once they made it __future__
> compatible.
>
> As far as ability to run 1990's applications, that's nice, but heaven
> help Developer B if he must add features to Developer A's Perl code,
> because, with the "Many ways to do it" philosophy, I've seen Perl I
> couldn't tell was Perl. I'd rather rewrite in Python 3 than trying to
> make extensive changes in somebody else's Perl.
>
> And of course, as mentioned, Python's wonderful standard library and
> other packages mean anything you start in Python you can finish in
> Python.
>
> CPAN? Around 2023 I had to do a CPAN update to accomodate some awful
> Perl based shopping application. The update broke Vim. Yeah, I know
> it's supposedly imposssible for that to happen, but it did. I had to
> bring in a Perl Guru to fix Vim, and even he couldn't get that shopping
> cart app to add the features wanted by the client.
>
> And don't get me started about Perl 6, oops, I mean Raku. Announced in
> July 2000, it was incompatible with a lot of Perl 5 code. It took
> several years from then to get a working implementation, and by that
> time the world had moved on to Python, Ruby and Lua.
>
> Unless the world experiences a technological change as deep and broad
> as ASCII to UTF-8, I doubt any future Python 4, if Python 4 even
> happens, will break much Python 3 code.
>
> SteveT
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