Re:Ask HN: Was the decision to name python3 'python3' worth it?
by PaulHoule on Saturday June 12, 2021 @02:19PM
(#27486407)
In retrospect I think the worst thing that happened to Python was that some Linux distros started writing system scripts in it which locked down Python 2 as a dependency for them for a very long time...
... and in turn meant that "python" would always have to be python 2, requiring Python 3 to be named "python3" on many systems...
...that wouldn't be so bad except that it adds and multiplies, you get python3.5, pip3.6, etc...
A transition like the Python 3 transition is dangerous and not all languages survive it. Who programs Perl 6? PHP has aborted language transitions when it was clear they couldn't sell them to users.
Python might not have survived it if there was some other like-R-but-acceptable answer for data analysis to get newcomers coming to Python.
... and in turn meant that "python" would always have to be python 2, requiring Python 3 to be named "python3" on many systems...
...that wouldn't be so bad except that it adds and multiplies, you get python3.5, pip3.6, etc...
A transition like the Python 3 transition is dangerous and not all languages survive it. Who programs Perl 6? PHP has aborted language transitions when it was clear they couldn't sell them to users.
Python might not have survived it if there was some other like-R-but-acceptable answer for data analysis to get newcomers coming to Python.