[Suro]

The point of maintaining the source code to the latest version is to guarantee its survival to the long term: at some point you will have to pass the ownership to another, younger, dev that might not have been taught into this older technology; or port your script to a newer hardware, and eventually deal with an sub-optimal or incomplete VM.

Either you maintain to the latest version and distribute the cost in time or one day you will have to start from scratch, and probably lose more time and money to do so. See every organization still running on XP ? They may be sentence to death in 3 month, that may be the hardest way learn it.

[roel_v]

"See every organization still running on XP ? They may be sentence to death in 3 month, that may be the hardest way learn it."

Huh? XP will just be chugging along, for another decade probably in some places. There are still business being run on DOS software FFS. What is the easiest - pay for a complete replacement somewhere in the next decade or two, or upgrading everything every few years to stay with the times?

(written from Windows XP and not likely to move for at least another half year...)

[bluedino]

Chances are those DOS systems aren't connected to the internet and vulnerable to a billion different attacks like XP machines are.

[greenyoda]

I'm sure that a lot of XP machines in the corporate world aren't connected to the internet either. For example, there's no reason to give a bunch of low-level employees in the accounting department access to the internet, and if their company's internal software runs fine on IE8 (or as native code), there's no particular reason to move away from XP. PCs on a factory floor that control industrial machinery probably aren't connected to the internet either.

[Suro]

Well, with Microsoft (and many other software company) ready to pull the plug of updates on this OS, I hope you have faith in your antivirus to stop every unpublished exploit.

[ghshephard]

Anti-Virus systems are not required for anybody who practices even a tiny modicum of caution (Don't browse with plugins like java enabled, never open attachments, don't click on links) - and in stand alone with a half decent set of firewall rules your Windows XP system will be fine.

[oblio]

A patched system with a firewall on and without "trojan horses" brought in by the user is relatively safe.

XP will stop getting patches soon.

And this list (http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-26/pr...) is only going to get longer and longer, because even though Microsoft will be EOLing XP, there will be tens of millions of Internet facing machines using it, probably even in 2020.

[ghshephard]

Having a firewall + not loading trojans gets you 99.9% of the way to security.

The problems are that normally people (A) don't want to deal with the hassle of a firewall, and (B) don't like to be cautious about opening attachments (C) People don't like to be restrained about what they click on, and finally (D) People tend to browse with all sorts of plugins loaded (not to mention Javascript being almost universally loaded).

For those people, yes, they will need to have a lot more handholding by their operating system vendor.

For somebody running a Windows XP system that doesn't have to do any of those (Cash Register, Kiosk, Office Machine) - they are fine, can be locked down, and can probably run Windows XP for the next 20 years without concern.

[klibertp]

Most places I know of running WinXP are completely cut off from Internet, using personal media like pendrives is prohibited and the identity of a user is confirmed with physical "PKI card" or something.

They will use their XP's long after the universe dies, I think.

[dded]

"Most"? Really? Most of the XP machines I know of are being used like any normal desktop machine: email, browsing, office, thumb drives, etc.

I know things are different with industrial machine control, they might be different at my doctor's office, and so forth. But I don't think those special situations add up to "most". Not yet.

[klibertp]

Most of the 4 places I know of, yes :D

And the dentist office is one of them, actually. Anyway, I may be wrong about this right now, but as you note, in a few years, when the support dies and nothing works on XP any longer it will still thrive in environments I describe.

[KaiserPro]

Spoken like a true Programmer.

remember to refactor costs man hours, which costs real cash. If it works there is no point changing it. especially if the benefit is some so nebulous as "sub optimal VM" if you were worried about speed in the first place it wouldn't have been written in python.

also you wouldn't port your script to new hardware, you'd port Python (well wait for someone else to....)

[Suro]

And that why so many businesses are outperform by new ones...

Because they couldn't delivers a newer product and features fast enough...

Because, to support the new "object" that drive money now they had to refactor an old library, created by a dev 5 years ago, and left untouched since.

[darkarmani]

> And that why so many businesses are outperform by new ones...

So many? Is this including the massive number of new businesses that fail in the first few years? I think that is a very hard assertion to make without seeing the actual numbers of these "new businesses." Most are private and don't report their profits, so you have no idea if they are burning through cash or actually making money -- you just see the hype.

[pnathan]

Calling out this comment. This is true.

Inertia is a total killer. Your extant codebase is both leverage and inertia. If The New Thing requires changing course and isn't amenable to your extant leverage, most (all?) companies can not maneuver to deal with The New Thing. It simply costs a great deal for very small benefit.

[KaiserPro]

I would suggest that is a fault of process not programming.

If there is a need to upgrade then obviously you need to do it. However if your pipeline doesn't touch unicode, and your upgrading to python 3.3 purely for unicode, then its a massive waist of man power.

programs are a tool, nothing more. If the tool works there is no need to change it. infact its can be very expensive, especially if noone knows how to use it.

For example, most people don't need a pneumatic drill for their DIY. Yes it might be much more flexible, and really really fast. But the cost of maintaining it, and training to get the best use out of it is prohibitive.

However if you own a garage, hand tools are far too slow, and there are is a rich pool of talent to use you fast powerful tools.

[jl6]

Servicing technical debt sometimes costs more than refactoring. Sometimes not. A good manager/programmer can decide which situation they are in and act accordingly.

[res0nat0r]

> at some point you will have to pass the ownership to another, younger, dev that might not have been taught into this older technology; or port your script to a newer hardware, and eventually deal with an sub-optimal or incomplete VM.

We're talking about Python 2 vs 3 here, not upgrading your system from Cobol to Clojure.

[berkut]

But the python source code's available to build, and anyway, quite a bit of the python in VFX is run through embedded interpreters in Maya, Nuke, Houdini or Katana which means they can keep using an old version indefinitely.

[raylu]

See every organization still running on XP ? They may be sentence to death in 3 month, that may be the hardest way learn it.

See that place running COBOL? Yeah, that's your bank.

[watwut]

I'm pretty sure young techs are able to learn technologies they not have been taught into.