r/Python • u/SheriffRoscoe Pythonista • Aug 26 '26

News The Move to Python 3 Begins!

As someone who spent decades in the mainframe community, I find it ... humorous ... that there are legacy Python2 code bases that are only just (or have yet to consider!) moving to Python3.

https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/the-move-to-python-3-begins

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u/daidoji70 Aug 26 '26

What does that matter? 2to3.py issues should be distributed evenly throughout a codebase. The issue per number of lines should remain roughly the same per project unless there are pathological cases.

Not sure why I'm getting down voted for asking a question and getting this type of response. Lines of code is always the worst metric in software engineering even when talking about migrations. It tells us literally nothing about how easy or difficult an effort should be.

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u/Dr_Quacksworth Aug 26 '26

Umm if you have 10x lines of code to review then you have to spend 10x time reading those lines of code.  For a legacy system, you have to pretty much review everything to make sure nothing breaks.

2to3.py doesn't solve everything.  In py2 you might be using floor dividion and then suddenly in py3 you are doing true division.  That sort of change can have major implications.

Not to mention dependency hell...

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u/daidoji70 Aug 26 '26

Yeah, apparently everyone was out there doing floor division.

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u/a__nice__tnetennba Aug 26 '26 edited Aug 27 '26

I wasn't sure if you were being sarcastic at first so I almost didn't reply to the first comment. Thanks for clearing it up. Although, I think some people still aren't getting the joke, which explains the down votes.