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Comment by thom_nic | Hacker News Reader

Can you explain why? Assuming you could still `apt-get install python27` and `update-alternatives` to symlink that back to the default `python`, no?

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I believe python upstream recommends that "python" is python2 and python3.x is "python3"?[1] (Although, that does not jive with official python packages for windows, which is both annoying and confusing - the pep governs "unix like" systems - eg. including linux subsystem for windows, but excluding python on windows...):

[1] https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394/

The default Python on any system is the only one which is really well tested and works with all the not-trivial-to-compile packages. Making py3 the default is exactly for deprecating py2 support, thus an apt-get install python27 would never have the wide range of apt installed packages, like it does now.

To be honest, new software should not be being developed on the 2.x line, so if it's not battletested now, it should never be.

But thats my opinion of course. We need to move the industry forward eventually and 95% of useful plugins/modules have already been ported.

It's time for py3 as a first class citizen.

Ansible only works with python 2.x (with beta 3.x support).

I don't get the logic behind your battletested thought.

Generally it might be true that finally python 3 is now the default for new projects but that doesn't mean that there will be a switch to python 3 as default enviroment. There are still a lot of base libs which are not ported to python 3. Most often nobody has interest in porting them. Some are, but then often as a complete rewrite, which are not backwards compatible.

Until Python 3 is the default env it will take a few more years.

In 3 years, Python 2 will not be maintained anymore. It should really not be used for anything important in 18.04 LTS anymore, because that'll need to be supported for longer.

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