[bloblaw]

> Tons of other languages have version requirements as part of their end user experience.

That does not dispute the original claim though. It's still a problem for Python even when other languages have the same problem.

> or Perl language versions being breaking

Perl 5.0 code written in 1999 will still happily run in 2023. In part due to the fact that breaking changes are *opt-in* within a Perl script.

Reference: https://www.perl.com/article/announcing-perl-7/

"""Perl 7.0 is going to be v5.32 but with different, saner, more modern defaults. [..] Perl 5 still has Perl 5’s extreme backward compatibility behavior, but Perl 7 gets modern practice with minimal historical baggage. """

Honestly, Perl is an example of extreme backwards compatibility that has the user experience at the forefront of their design decisions.

[dagmx]

I’m not trying to dispute whether it’s a problem. I agree it’s a problem.

I’m saying that avoiding Python because of it is illogical (to me) because the problems they’re describing aren’t unique to Python, and I don’t think there’s much that doesn’t suffer from it.

Perl is an odd one because, as your comment says, Perl is going 5->7 because 6 was such a disastrous break.

[bloblaw]

> I’m not trying to dispute whether it’s a problem. I agree it’s a problem.

ack

> I’m saying that avoiding Python because of it is illogical (to me) because the problems they’re describing aren’t unique to Python, and I don’t think there’s much that doesn’t suffer from it.

I don't completely agree, but I see your point. Any interpreted language (or non-statically linked binaries) could (and does) suffer from these problems. I'd like to see Python have a better packaging story...but for now we live with shipping the developers environment (via docker or virtualenv) for running complex Python applications and services.

I will say that *statically linked* compiled languages are able to avoid many of these problems because running these binaries typically only requires the OS (eg, Go, Nim, Rust, Zig, C/C++ when statically linked, Object-Pascal, etc)

> Perl is going 5->7 because 6 was such a disastrous break.

Agree. And they did the right thing by actually renaming it Raku and skipping the version release.

[w0m]

slight correction >Agree. And they did the right thing by actually renaming it Raku and skipping the version release.

should be >Agree. And they did the right thing by actually renaming it Raku and functionally killing the language.