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by tonyarkles 4445 days ago
On both OSX and many Linux distros, Py 2 comes pre-installed but Py 3 does not. If I'm going to write simple scripts that I'm going to give out to people, it's nice not having to worry about them needing to fuck around to get the script to run.
2 comments
djjaxe 4445 days ago
> On both OSX and many Linux distros, Py 2 comes pre-installed but Py 3 does not.

Because python 3 was not the most stable at the time of distribution of that operating system. Why would I the developer of said operating system release anything but the most stable versions of the language? This would in turn make my operating system at times less stable.

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tonyarkles 4444 days ago
I totally agree. However, until Py3 is packaged standard it's always going to be easier to run Py2 code. For example, I have a friend who does data analysis on OSX and occasionally she gets data in a format that is ugly. I take a look at it and send her a python script that will massage it into something nice.

She's ok with the occasional "sudo pip install ..." to get a library, but if my instructions started with "ok, first install Xcode and then install homebrew" the answer would probably be "it's ok I'll just do it by hand"

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collyw 4444 days ago
Simple script like that are unlikely to be much different between Python 2 and 3 unless you are using specific libraries. Just make make all the "prints" into "prints()" and "Exeption, e" into "Exception as e", and I can't see what the differences would be.
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tonyarkles 4443 days ago
The difference is in the effort required to make it run at all!
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takeda 4444 days ago
It already is in many distros.
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collyw 4444 days ago
sudo apt-get install python3. Or Whatever the OSX equivalent is.

Its not that difficult.

Arch comes with Python 3 as default.

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TheCoelacanth 4443 days ago
OSX doesn't come with a package manager.
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