So that's why python screwed Windows 7

[james_s]

Sunsetting support for Windows 7 / 8.1 in early 2023

https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/185534985/sunsetting-support-for-windows-7-8-1-in-early-2023

When that happens I'll sunset my use of Chrome on my Windows machine. Actually I haven't used Chrome in some time, I like Brave much better, I wonder when they will follow.

[SiliconWizard]

I don't know what ending support will mean. Does that mean that they won't build and test Chrome for Win 7 - in which case, Chromium-based browsers, including Chromium itself, have chances to still be supported on Win 7, at least until they won't build compatible binaries anymore. But if Google make changes in the Chromium source code/rely on libraries that are themselves not supported anymore on Win 7, that will be another story.

I use Firefox anyway. And I have Chromium just in case, for the rare websites (unfortunately increasing in number) that are not compatible with Firefox.

[Karel]

I use Firefox anyway. And I have Chromium just in case, for the rare websites (unfortunately increasing in number) that are not compatible with Firefox.

I use Firefox as well and so far, the only website that doesn't play nice with Firefox is google maps.
Fortunately I use OpenStreetMap.

When a website doesn't work in Firefox, it's usually because my security & privacy settings are too strict or
there's some addon (related to privacy) that brakes the website.

[DavidAlfa]

Anyways, screw python, what kind of psychopath creates a language with significant spaces?
Last time I spent a whole afternoon for a f** tab!
Instantly added to my personal blacklist


Only COBOL and  INTERCAL are worse.
First 5 minutes are gold:

[SiliconWizard]

So, there we go!
I've used (occasionally) Chromium on Win 7 without a problem. Binaries available here: https://download-chromium.appspot.com/
Just downloaded the latest today. It can't run on 7 anymore. (Uses kernel32 functions from Win 8+.)

Which likely means it's also the end for Chrome itself (and a lot of the Chromium-based browsers) on Win 7. Cheers!

[PlainName]

Yep. I would sob if I happened to use Chrome, but this is just another reason not to

[Karel]

Looking forward to windows 13 

[Doctorandus_P]

Anyways, screw python, what kind of psychopath creates a language with significant spaces?
Last time I spent a whole afternoon for a f** tab!

I once encountered a bug in MeldMerge, and because I was interested in python back then I decided t have a look at it. It turned out that a few spaces were missing and a line that should have been part of a for loop was executed only once, but after the loop ended.
How do you even format a patch for that?

Another place where the whitespace significance bites me is by using the python shell as a calculator. If you type in " 5+3" (without quotes) you get: "IndentationError: unexpected indent" That's quite annoying when copying and pasting some forumula from elsewhere.

I also thoroughly dislike the ad-hoc -ness of python. The horrible "if something is __main__: " contraption to have an (unfrotuantely not so) decent start point for a program is another annoyance.

Mandatory declaration of variables would be another big improvement. I've spend too much time running a program and debugging only to find out I made a simple typo in some variable and that caused python to just create a new variable. There are also some areas in python where variable declarations are already mandatory. For use of global variables in functions for example. Also when you're appending to a list in for example a for loop, you often have to declare an empty list just to have something to add to.

But these day's there is unfortunately hardly a way around python. It's become the defacto scripting language in a lot of projects.
In C it's quite common to have "beautifiers" to change whitespace and adjust for "coding style". I guess it would not be too hard to write something similar for python which then also adds braces instead of whitespace and can have variable declarations and a syntax check on mistyped variable names. That program would then also be able to spit out "standard python" without those features.

Python as an interpreted language is also "obsoleted". These days the python "interpreter" (sort of) compiles everything before it executes it, and in doing that creates extra garbage files in your directory tree.

[SiliconWizard]

Yep. I would sob if I happened to use Chrome, but this is just another reason not to

Yep but as I said, I only use Chromium (not Chrome) occasionally for web sites that do not work properly on Firefox. And there certainly are more and more of them. Which comes from the fact Chrome has crushed the market and now 99% of web developers do not care about being compatible with Firefox anymore. They don't even test on it.

And as I also said earlier, this likely means that ALL browsers based on Chromium will also stop being supported on Win 7. And most alternative, and decent, browsers these days are Chromium-based (such as Brave), apart from Firefox. And who knows for how long Firefox will support Win 7.

The date is not random. This is coming right at the time when Win 7 extended support is ending. (I think early 2023.)

[PlainName]

A Mint migration has appeared on the horizon.

[JPortici]

Anyways, screw python, what kind of psychopath creates a language with significant spaces?
Last time I spent a whole afternoon for a f** tab!

I once encountered a bug in MeldMerge, and because I was interested in python back then I decided t have a look at it. It turned out that a few spaces were missing and a line that should have been part of a for loop was executed only once, but after the loop ended.
How do you even format a patch for that?

Another place where the whitespace significance bites me is by using the python shell as a calculator. If you type in " 5+3" (without quotes) you get: "IndentationError: unexpected indent" That's quite annoying when copying and pasting some forumula from elsewhere.

I also thoroughly dislike the ad-hoc -ness of python. The horrible "if something is __main__: " contraption to have an (unfrotuantely not so) decent start point for a program is another annoyance.

Mandatory declaration of variables would be another big improvement. I've spend too much time running a program and debugging only to find out I made a simple typo in some variable and that caused python to just create a new variable. There are also some areas in python where variable declarations are already mandatory. For use of global variables in functions for example. Also when you're appending to a list in for example a for loop, you often have to declare an empty list just to have something to add to.

But these day's there is unfortunately hardly a way around python. It's become the defacto scripting language in a lot of projects.
In C it's quite common to have "beautifiers" to change whitespace and adjust for "coding style". I guess it would not be too hard to write something similar for python which then also adds braces instead of whitespace and can have variable declarations and a syntax check on mistyped variable names. That program would then also be able to spit out "standard python" without those features.

Python as an interpreted language is also "obsoleted". These days the python "interpreter" (sort of) compiles everything before it executes it, and in doing that creates extra garbage files in your directory tree.

There is a reason why everybody with common sense writes "Option Explicit" at the beginning of every single visual basic module.
The same reason why if/end if or { } or any other way to define a code block are good and using whitespaces to do the same is completely and utterly retarded. Just the fact that every piece of code i will ever touch will immediately be converted to white spaces / two spaces per tab because "that is the only acceptable way to indent" (TM) should have highlighted the stupidity of the number of whitespaces having any significance in a language.

[SiliconWizard]

A Mint migration has appeared on the horizon.

Well I have Linux installed on a number of machines already. Just not my main workstation.
Reasons are relatively simple (and personal):
- I still find Win 7 more productive for the type of work I do than any Linux desktop environment (so, that's the desktop environment POV.)
- I use a number of Windows-only tools. Fewer and fewer though. And I know there is Wine, and if all hopes fail, I can use a virtual machine. But that's less convenient.
- I occasionally need to test stuff on a Windows environment. Admittedly, now being limited to Win 7 does limit my testing capabilities on Windows, but it's still often good enough for this.
- I use some Firewire hardware that only has limited support on Linux.

None of this is a huge showstopper though, and it's purely personal, although I'm pretty sure a few others are currently in the same boat.

[woofy]

Wine and VM's are not always a viable option. My last Windows software I need to run is Proteus PCB. It's not happy with Wine or in a VM (which needs a license upgrade from Labcenter). After my final win7 machine died I let it go and moved to win10. My current work station dual boots win10 and Mint - now my daily workhorse.

[voltsandjolts]

A Mint migration has appeared on the horizon.

My current work station dual boots win10 and Mint - now my daily workhorse.

Yup, Mint is nice and user-centric.
One day I will detach from Altium and make Mint my daily driver, until then Win10 mostly.
(IIUC Altium + Wine is a no-go so I haven't even tried)

[PlainName]

My current work station dual boots win10 and Mint - now my daily workhorse

How do you work that? I tried dual boot but found I only ever single booted. If there was something I needed the other OS for I just put it off because of the time taken to switch and the lack of whatever that I was using on the first OS. Workflow killer.

[woofy]

My current work station dual boots win10 and Mint - now my daily workhorse

How do you work that? I tried dual boot but found I only ever single booted. If there was something I needed the other OS for I just put it off because of the time taken to switch and the lack of whatever that I was using on the first OS. Workflow killer.

By dual boot, I don't mean both OS's at the same time, I mean selected at startup
I have 500GB ssd and 500 GB nvme drives. Started with a clean install and put Win10 on the ssd. With win10 up and running I installed Mint on the nvme drive. Mint detected the Win10 drive during installation and now presents me with the boot option at startup.
That said, I do have another Win10 in a VM for when I need a quick check on something.

[Ranayna]

My current work station dual boots win10 and Mint - now my daily workhorse

How do you work that? I tried dual boot but found I only ever single booted. If there was something I needed the other OS for I just put it off because of the time taken to switch and the lack of whatever that I was using on the first OS. Workflow killer.

Heh, i had just the same experience in the past. Sooner or later i settled back to Windows, because, let's face it, if you have decades of Windows experience, it is just easier to use.

So when the next attempt to try Linux came up, i went all out. I pulled an image of the running windows as a fallback, but then formatted the drive and only installed Manjaro. I had quite some hiccups early on that would have pushed me back to Windows. But the additional hurdle of needing to restore the image was enough to keep me on Linux. And i am not regretting that.

[PlainName]

My current work station dual boots win10 and Mint - now my daily workhorse

How do you work that? I tried dual boot but found I only ever single booted. If there was something I needed the other OS for I just put it off because of the time taken to switch and the lack of whatever that I was using on the first OS. Workflow killer.

By dual boot, I don't mean both OS's at the same time, I mean selected at startup
I have 500GB ssd and 500 GB nvme drives. Started with a clean install and put Win10 on the ssd. With win10 up and running I installed Mint on the nvme drive. Mint detected the Win10 drive during installation and now presents me with the boot option at startup.
That said, I do have another Win10 in a VM for when I need a quick check on something.

Yes, I realise that. It's just that it would seem to restrict one to either one set of apps or another, and your choice at boot defines what you can, and can't, do until another reboot (which isn't that quick). It would drive me bonkers booting one and then realising I need something on the other. That's a major reason why I installed VMWare many years ago...