The end of last year marked the "End of Life" for Python 2.7,
closing the book on the fork in the Python language forever.
Right?
At least where I work January first came and went without any
trouble or fanfare. This wasn't Y2K, this was no K. Because
why switch when a number of libraries still only support 2.7
and switching means finding replacements, recoding in their
APIs, testing and hoping that everything works the way it used
to. Why bother?
In the age of evergreen browsers and planned obsolescence in
the electronics we buy - phones, computers, tablets and
everything else - we've gotten used to the idea of software
as this evergrowing, everchanging monstrosity. But cooler
heads remember if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
So is
this
the last 2.7 release? Even it claims to be "expected to be the
penultimate release for Python 2.7". So even after life has
ended, another gasp is expected. At least one. Maybe more.
There's still a lot of software out there written in 2.7 that
isn't going away soon because it runs critical business
processes and there's no reason to update it. Having witnessed
the long trail of FORTRAN at the edges, I'd say Python 2.7 has
decades ahead of it. Which begs the question of who can
declare a language dead and when.
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