[ale] Ansible and Python comment?

[Steve Litt]

Leam Hall via Ale said on Wed, 19 Jun 2024 12:00:31 -0500

>On 6/19/24 11:48, Steve Litt via Ale wrote:
>> Leam Hall via Ale said on Wed, 19 Jun 2024 08:01:51 -0500
>>   
>>> Didn't I see a note somewhere about Ansible dropping support for
>>> older versions of Python that are still used on current RHEL
>>> systems? I'm trying to find out more, anyone know?  
>> 
>> I don't know, but if by "older versions of Python" you mean 2.x I
>> think any software written in Python 2.x should be kicked out of
>> every distro. Python 2.x was deprecated over 10 years ago, so
>> there's no excuse for Python 2.x anymore.
>> 
>> SteveT
>> 
>> Steve Litt  
>
>If I understand correctly, it was several versions of Python 3.x.

Blowing off any 3.x is a bad idea.

> RHEL
>7 is still in maintenance phase, but not much longer, and uses Python
>2.7.

In that case, I hope you've moved on from RHEL7.

>
>What the developers deprecate, and what industry uses, seem totally
>unrelated. 

If by Developers you mean the developers of the Python language, I
agree. The problem I see is that a lot of those using the Python
language to develop other software are lazy. Too lazy to convert to
3.x, which isn't very difficult if one sticks to Python's standard
library. But many are also too lazy to write code, so they import all
sorts of weird PIP packages that by definition won't be stable and
insanely balloon the difficulty of moving from one Python version to a
later one.

> I understand a few reasons why developers don't want to
>keep supporting older versions, 

If by "developers" in the preceding sentence you mean developers of the
Python language, yes, I see why too. If you mean application developers
who *use* Python to make their applications, my observation has been
that they love keeping on using older Python so they don't have to put
in the work to move up to 3.x, which is now about 15 years old.+

>and I understand why Linux versions
>use open source components. The issue may be that development is
>accelerating faster than enterprise Linux versions can transition.

10 years? Maybe the enterprise Linux versions are promising too long a
lifetime.

>Maybe it's time for a more stable language?

Can't get any more stable than C, which can still compile and run 80's
code. Freepascal, when you use the option to make it just like Turbo
Pascal 5.5, is stable. I have a feeling C++ is stable, but I wouldn't
develop in C++ for all the gold in Fort Knox. I think TCL and TCL/Tk are
very stable, but I find them difficult to program in.

When it comes to language stability over time, there's a happy medium.
You don't want it so stable that it never acquires new features, or if
it does, they're glued on as an afterthought (e.g. Perl objects). And
you don't want it so quickly changing that you begin new construction
in different versions (e.g. Lua). I think Python and Ruby are in the
Goldilocks Zone.

SteveT

Steve Litt 

http://444domains.com