[fnord123]

The python language developers absolutely did do it wrong. You could not run mixed python2 and python3 code. Either all your dependencies were migrated and you could flip the switch and try things out, or some stragglers kept you running code with compatibilities for 2 and 3 while you waited.

And if one of your dependencies started using new features from 3.x it would break everyone stuck on 2.7, so you can't even use the new features in your library. So why would you bother migrating? So everyone was stuck in a game theoretical position where there was no first mover advantage because one straggler would invalidate all the investment.

[ric2b]

> So everyone was stuck in a game theoretical position where there was no first mover advantage because one straggler would invalidate all the investment.

Clearly not, as most libraries are now Python 3 only, so the switch did happen.

I do see a lot of people complaining but I see no practical solutions being suggested. "Just don't do a breaking change" isn't a practical solution when the problem being fixed was such a core feature of every language, strings.

[fnord123]

>Clearly not, as most libraries are now Python 3 only, so the switch did happen.

You don't build a convincing argument that the python developers did nothing wrong when saying this 1.5 years after python 2.7 has been EOL.

>I do see a lot of people complaining but I see no practical solutions being suggested. "Just don't do a breaking change" isn't a practical solution when the problem being fixed was such a core feature of every language, strings.

A system should have been put in place to allow python3 code to import python2 code. Then people have an incentive to actually run python3 and use python3 features.

More people are stuck on Java8 which has been EOL for a very long time. They are often stuck because Android hasn't upgraded afaik. But Java11, 14, etc can use almost all Java8 code unless it uses I think sun.misc.Unsafe or something like that. The point is that people can use modern Javas with Java libraries targeting older versions.