Microsoft Drops Official Support for Python 3.7 in Visual Studio Code (theregister.com) 24
Still using Python 3.7? Even Microsoft thinks it is time to move on after the Windows behemoth finally deprecated support for the language in the October 2023 release of its extension for Visual Studio Code. From a report: Python 3.7 reached its end of life in June but remains popular. According to some statistics, many sites use version 3.7 -- 17.2 percent of those using Python 3.x by some estimates. Python 3.6, which reached the end of life in 2021, accounts for 28.9 percent and is still the most popular. Python 3.8 sits between the two, accounting for 23.3 percent.
Doubtless mindful of its popularity, Microsoft confirmed there were no plans to strip the code from the Visual Studio Code extension deliberately, saying: "We expect the extension will continue to work unofficially with Python 3.7 for the foreseeable future." However, there are no guarantees that something won't go wrong without official support. Python has moved to an annual cadence for end of life. Python 3.8 is due to reach end of life in October 2024, meaning that official support in Microsoft's Visual Studio Code extension will end with the first release of 2025, and so on. According to Microsoft, the Python extension for Visual Studio works with all actively supported versions of Python. 3.12 is the latest version and, unsurprisingly, has yet to influence the statistics too much. 3.13 is penciled in for release next year.
Doubtless mindful of its popularity, Microsoft confirmed there were no plans to strip the code from the Visual Studio Code extension deliberately, saying: "We expect the extension will continue to work unofficially with Python 3.7 for the foreseeable future." However, there are no guarantees that something won't go wrong without official support. Python has moved to an annual cadence for end of life. Python 3.8 is due to reach end of life in October 2024, meaning that official support in Microsoft's Visual Studio Code extension will end with the first release of 2025, and so on. According to Microsoft, the Python extension for Visual Studio works with all actively supported versions of Python. 3.12 is the latest version and, unsurprisingly, has yet to influence the statistics too much. 3.13 is penciled in for release next year.
3.7? (Score:1)
I think you mean 2.7 there buddy.
Re:3.7? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, he meant 3.7. Check the official blog post:
https://devblogs.microsoft.com... [microsoft.com]
Re:3.7? (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like the official plan is your code won't be good for more than four years?
Wow, I'll just slink back to pretty much any other language.
I guess it's job security for programmers who recommend python? Back in the day the Oracle DBA had that kind of grift going and it paid quite well.
I think I had one piece of Perl code start emitting warnings after fifteen years. "How quaint!" they'll say.
Re: (Score:3)
It's a ridiculously vast overstatement. Python doesn't strive as hard at version compatibility as C or C++, but it works fairly hard at it. It's much more "adding new features" than removing old features ... at least not those that haven't been deprecated for years. And the older versions are typically available for install for a long time . See: https://www.python.org/downloa... [python.org]
If you want an older release, it's almost certainly available.
Re: (Score:1)
*Laughs in Cobol*
Re: (Score:2)
Re:3.7? (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like the official plan is your code won't be good for more than four years?
That's silly. There were big changes between 2.x and 3.x, but there were no code-breaking changes between 3.7 and 3.8.
Just upgrade to the latest 3.x, run your unit tests to be sure everything is okay, and then move on with your life.
Re: (Score:2)
For the most part should be compatible but there are more code breaking changes than there used to be within the 3.x tree.
Sure, I will always update to the latest and brightest but depending on circumstances, sometimes you just can't, especially when critical code is depending on a library whose vendor has disappeared
Re: (Score:3)
Most python code that was written for Python 3.7 will run just fine in 3.12, a few things that were already marked as deprecated will not work though.
We work mostly with Go and Python, and the Go release cycle is more aggressive with releases getting security back ports for about 12 months. We have to upgrade to a new major release twice a year, and we do have some compatibility issues almost on every Go release.
Kubernetes has a new release 3 times a year with deprecated APIs on regular basis.
With python we
Re: (Score:2)
Nah. Every little change to Python breaks numerous apps and libraries. 3.7 to 3.8 represents as much tragedy in the support world as 2.7 to 3.12
It blows my mind that people tolerate this kind of brittleness.
Re: (Score:2)
Python is a bit of a mess, and you end bundling a specific version of it with you libraries you need per application.
That said the quote "3.7 to 3.8 represents as much tragedy in the support world as 2.7 to 3.12" is pretty hyperbolic.
Python 2 to 3 includes numerous backwards incompatible syntax changes. The different between minor versions is normally a fix for security buffer overflows that might cause an issue in extreme scenarios.
The most brittle language that I currently know about is Swift and I tate t
As long as Gimp keeps the Python 2 flame alive (Score:1)
Did anyone ever admit guilt and apologise?
Re: (Score:1)
No! They convinced all the 20 something hipsters this is just the way it is! And they bought it. Sadly, all us 40-somethings are looking like foot dragging dullards because of it though. It's like hipster jujitsu, what they do. "We should not use a language that keeps us on an upgrade treadmill." "OK Boomer. Have fun with your security holes."... It's a hard comment to defend against - security -. But I find it REALLY hard to swallow that you can't fix Python's security problems and make "print 'hey
Re: As long as Gimp keeps the Python 2 flame alive (Score:2)
By the time I was 40 I got tired of the bugs introduced by duck typing and just use python (and other weakly typed languages) sparingly.
breaking source compatibility (Score:2)
I wonder if the issue is source compatibility or external package dependencies on particular Python versions. The latter was the issue I ran into, but I don't use it enough to judge.
Python 2 (Score:1)
I'm still using Python 2.78 you insensitive clod!
Decisions made in a vacuum (Score:2)
One would think Microsoft would want to keep vscode as compatible as possible with what's used the more popular Linux distributions... but apparently not.
Python 3.6 may be officially EOLed, but it is also the stock version on RHEL 8 - so it's going to be widely in use for quite a few more years.
Python 3.8 is stock in Ubuntu 20.04. That's obviously not EOLed yet, but it's gonna happen well before support for 20.04 goes away.
Re: (Score:2)
They say they will not remove the code for the foreseable future, unofficially keep the support for the foreseable future. Even then, python looks like python... most of the stuff like syntax highlighting should work
IMHO they are doing the right thing to sound the alarm since soon it won't be getting security updates. Though most apps will upgrade with no problem, some people wait until the last minute to upgrade... and if there is an issue, it should not be done at the last minute especially in a prod envi
Re: (Score:2)
IMHO they are doing the right thing to sound the alarm since soon it won't be getting security updates.
Actually, typically they will continue to get security patches if they're part of a LTS Linux release.
Re: (Score:3)
Now that pyenv works very well, if you do any serious python development you should install a python interpreter and environment that is separate from the OS provided interpreter. This will allows you to better control your third party dependencies without clashing with the ones installed by your OS package manager like yum, apt, dnf, ...
We install python on our containers and development desktops through pyenv and this way we are sure that everyone has the same version of the interpreter without having to
Re: (Score:2)
This is the way. Python makes it very easy and robust to run whatever version of Python you require without having to mess around with the version installed on the system.
Re: (Score:2)
One would think Microsoft would want to keep vscode as compatible as possible with what's used the more popular Linux distributions... but apparently not.
Python user talking about code longevity is ironic.
As soon as I saw... (Score:1)
I started tinkering with Python during the v2.x days. As soon as I saw the v3.x fiasco coming down the pike I ran for the hills and abandoned the tool.
That the language got to the point of needing such a major overhaul indicates incompetence from the language designers & maintainers.