So that's why python screwed Windows 7

[free_electron]

Blame the person who thought it was a good idea to make your business dependent on some piece of software that is not
backwards supported for the time you intend to use it.

ah, is see , so we must all become sootseers, clearvoyants and future predictors. i'll go dust off the old dowsing rod.

Or accept the risk and buy a new analyzer if necessary and consider it the price you pay for doing business.

you can do that with a 5$ screwdriver. replace it every year. expensive machinery should run long time. 4 year old phone : sorry no more updates for you. toss it. but it cost me 1000$ ... so i paid 250$ a year for this thing... no wonder everyone is broke all the time.

Or you can accept the risk and buy a new analyzer if necessary and consider it the price you pay for doing business.

There is no need to buy a new machine. The machine works fine. so does the control program that came with it. The problem is elsewhere

I was referring to pc's where you do have a choice. If your applications needed for your business require the use of a certain OS,
then check how many years the whole setup is supported and be prepared to replace it when the time comes.

back to the dowsing rod then... or, since we are more technical here : a time machine. let's jump 10 years forward , buy the machine there and bring it back, then we know it will work guaranteed for at least 10 years.
Good luck getting an answer from device makers on longevity. Some things are outside of their control as well and they too rely on other systems.

In other words, think about the future, when and how to replace your machines, instruments, etc. before buying equipment.

i thought about it. the answer is simple : machines should keep working forever, as long as i need them, or until i retire, whatever comes first.

buy a screwdriver and 2 years from now they stop making the screws that needs that screwdriver. ok, I'll buy a new one then , no problem. but what i f i need to repair something with the old type screw ? so i'll have it laying around , cluttering up the place. and one day after i toss it i will need it...

Things move too fast. it's all spur of the moment. Release it early, hype it with influencers and social media , throw some crypto and arduino and iot in there for additional cred, and fix the bugs later (or hope it goes obsolete before so we don't have to spend time and money building more releases , we can focus on the next big thing : bilking people out of more money. Actually , let's not hope it goes obsolete. Let's just make it obsolete. If we really want to get rid of the support headache : let's shut down the company and start something new. That seems to be the china model : make it, sell it , dissolve company. We got our money and we don't need to support our customers if we don't exist.

Businesses can write off their large stuff. As a small consumer this becomes a problem. A time and money problem : you're constantly out of both
and as a hobbyist it just makes things less enjoyable , the number of hurdles just goes up and you are dealing with more and more noise to get to the signal.

[Karel]

<cut>

Yeah, I get it, the world is unfair. Get over it.

You decided to buy something that has limited support.
In addition, you install something that is not supported.
After years, that something breaks and suddenly it's somebodyelse's fault.

Back to the topic, what do we pay for Python that we can claim that they should do better?
It's easy to criticize, it's harder to come up with something better.

Personally, I find it astonishing that people grab some free software from the net and then start complaining.
If you don't like it, use something else or find your self another job or hobby...
And no, I'm not a Python fan.

[PlainName]

I think many of you are missing the thrust. I have no real problem with unsupported stuff just not working with new things that work differently. The screwdriver of free_electron might be a good example: it works fine but the screws are no longer made. That's a bummer and I'd be annoyed (and one reason I just purchased a Picoscope rather than a Chinese version-alike), but such is life.

The problem I am railing at is where the screwdriver is made deliberately obsolete. The screws are now made incompatible for no reason other than they won't work with the original screwdriver (but the latest screwdriver which also works with the old screws is fine). Think Dymo tape machines that Dave recently slammed.

But I know Microsoft does that. Since W10 came out they have done their best to kill off W7, and that wouldn't matter a toss if it was just them. If some new software genuinely needed a W10 feature then that's fair enough. But many don't. I have apps that are unsupported on W7 and that's cool - they will either work or not, but I'm not going to complain if they don't.

However, Microsoft are overstepping their brief and doing their best to ensure third-party apps are incompatible just to get people off W7, and it's that aspect that I am railing at. It's not an obsolete OS, it is just unsupported.

Again, think Dymo. How come they get shit thrown at them but with Windows it's the users that get covered in it?

[PlainName]

Back to the topic, what do we pay for Python that we can claim that they should do better?

We are their users (albeit unwittingly when it comes the Kicad). Don't the authors take pride in their work and try to match the needs of their users? Is it not professional-quality work? I am betting at least some of the authors see the ego boost of being involved as decent recompense.

So, why do they bother writing and making it available? Clearly, it is not some backwater hack to scratch a personal itch, so other than some money changing hands (and how much do you think would be needed to be able to say "that doesn't work for me" or "why doesn't it ..."), why do they do it?

If you don't like it, use something else

I do use something else and I don't use it because I can't. If they let me use it I might find it pretty good and switch to it. Do they not want more users or something?

[Karel]

So, why do they bother writing and making it available? Clearly, it is not some backwater hack to scratch a personal itch, so other than some money changing hands (and how much do you think would be needed to be able to say "that doesn't work for me" or "why doesn't it ..."), why do they do it?

Apparently they (KiCad) do it for the people that are willing to use the OS'es that they support.
It's already a lot of work to support three different OS'es.
Asking them to support also an OS that is not supported anymore by the manufacturer and also not
by a critical piece of software (Python) needed by KiCad, doesn't seem reasonable.

[free_electron]

You decided to buy something that has limited support.

well some things are slim picking ... supply, demand, budget ..

In addition, you install something that is not supported.
After years, that something breaks and suddenly it's somebodyelse's fault.

an UPDATE breaks something that works. There is such a thing as backward compatibility...

Back to the topic, what do we pay for Python that we can claim that they should do better?
It's easy to criticize, it's harder to come up with something better.

ahh .. the old open source problem. it has to be free , if you don't like it : you have the source , fork it and fix it.

Personally, I find it astonishing that people grab some free software from the net and then start complaining.

free as in free beer. ain't no such thing... somehow it needs to be paid for. Altruism only goes so far. at the end of the day there needs to be something on your plate to eat.

[james_s]

My solution was to simply stop updating Python. Updating from 2 to 3 was a huge mess but since then things have stabilized and I have not encountered anything that doesn't work with whatever version I have on Win7. More and more though I've been transitioning to Linux which is the only viable path forward that I see. Windows 8 was garbage and 10 and 11 are defective in new and interesting ways. I was forced to use 10 for a while at a former job and it was like a breath of fresh air when my new job issued me a Macbook but that hardware and ecosystem is too limited in selection for my taste when it comes to something I'm spending my own money on.

[PlainName]

Asking them to support also an OS that is not supported anymore by the manufacturer

You're just not getting it, are you? I am NOT asking them to support an OS that.. blah blah. I am merely asking them not to deliverately break it.

Do you not see the difference?

[janoc]

Guys, could we, please, stop spreading FUD and nonsense about Python?

And conflating incompetence of developers using with some sort of inherent misfeature of the language?

- First, distributing applications written in Python - if you are downloading Python scripts, you are doing it wrong. Or rather whoever has published the code (and it is meant to be an application) did. Python can be compiled and packaged into a self-contained executable, as any other Windows application without issues.

There is PyInstaller, there is fbs, there is freeze and probably a few other tools that can be used for that.

If the author of the program you are using didn't do this and is distributing a bunch of .py files with a dependency hell, blame them, not Python. That's like downloading C source code from Github and complaining about the C language conspiracy of Kernighan & co because you need to find and learn to use a compiler.


- Python versioning - again, if some software works only with certain versions of Python, that's hardly Python's fault. The major Python versions are very well backwards compatible, so pretty much anything that runs in 3.0 will work in the current 3.10.5. So just use the current up to date version (or at least something reasonably recent - like 3.8 when 3.10 is current) and you will be fine.

The major break was between Python 2 and 3 - but that's more than 14 years back and everyone had ample time to adjust and update their code. Python 2 has been EOL-ed since 2020.

One exception to this are binary extensions for Python which must be compiled for the matching Python versions (not every minor/patch, there is a defined ABI). However, properly written/setup Python package will handle that for you, including downloading pre-built packages so you don't even need a compiler setup on your own machine (it will compile only if the prebuilt binary isn't available for your version of Python, which is rare).

If this is not set up properly, complain to whoever wrote and published that piece of crap, not Python. Python has all the tooling and infrastructure to support this in place. That's no different than having a C library compiled with wrong options or for a wrong architecture and now one can't use it. Is that somehow fault of C or compiler developers?

However, most Python code does not use/need binary extensions apart from the commonly packaged, standard stuff (parts of Python's standard library, Numpy, Pandas, maybe Tensorflow if you are doing machine learning), etc. I probably didn't have to deal with compiling a Python extension (or even seen one compile as in most cases it is automatic) in at least two years - of daily Python development for work.


- Python's incompatibility with older Windows - that's simply because the toolchains for Windows stopped supporting the older Windows releases. Certainly, one could use old versions of Visual Studio - but that blocks the development of Python (and everything else) on an old version of C/C++, causes a ton of maintenance and support issues (different versions of code need to exist and be supported - a highly nontrivial stuff when you have huge packages like Numpy or Pandas depending on it!). Keep in mind that Python developers don't have unlimited resources.

If an old PC works with an old version of an OS for you - great. But don't expect that everyone else wants/can work like that and that people will support these old systems with current software releases (you can always use an old release, it will work fine) forever, no matter what problems it causes. At least not for free. If you do need such support for old machines for business reasons, you can always pay for it and you will get the stuff built for you.

ActiveState is one of such companies when it comes to Python, for example.


- Concerning Guido van Rossum - he has not been involved with day to day work on Python at least since 2018 when he left his position as the "benevolent dictator for life" and retired. In 2019 he left even the Python Steering Council. He joined Microsoft only later in 2019. Before Microsoft he worked at Google and Dropbox - both huge Python shops.

The first version of Python that is incompatible with Windows 7 is 3.9.0, released in 2020. Long past the time Guido had any decision power or influence on Python development. And the first version that broke XP compatibility was in 3.5.0 released in 2015 - while he was at Dropbox.

It also completely ignores the fact how the decision making in Python development is done - no, it isn't a single person deciding to "break Windows 7" even if they were outright hell-bent on it.

So stop the ridiculous BS conspiracies, please.

[nctnico]

Well, then explain to me why some Python software doesn't run because it depends HARD on particular OS libraries? Getting a Python application to work on Linux is a straight nightmare. And there isn't a good solution to package the libraries together with a Python application. It takes trial and error to figure out what is actually needed.

[janoc]

Well, then explain to me why some Python software doesn't run because it depends HARD on particular OS libraries? Getting a Python application to work on Linux is a straight nightmare. And there isn't a good solution to package the libraries together with a Python application. It takes trial and error to figure out what is actually needed.

Please provide specific examples of what software, which libraries, etc. Otherwise it is just trying to vent and that won't help anyone nor anything.

And I do happen to be Linux user myself - and never had any major issues with Python apps in Linux. The only exception of what could be a nightmare are the various machine learning tools like PyTorch or Tensorflow. But those are terribly designed because they grew out of what were essentially research projects, where the emphasis was on producing data and papers, not maintainable code, specifically in the case of Tensorflow it is a C/C++ library that is wrapped in Python front end. So the result is kinda like building Excel on top of a bunch of Matlab scripts ...

[nctnico]

Well, then explain to me why some Python software doesn't run because it depends HARD on particular OS libraries? Getting a Python application to work on Linux is a straight nightmare. And there isn't a good solution to package the libraries together with a Python application. It takes trial and error to figure out what is actually needed.

Please provide specific examples of what software, which libraries, etc. Otherwise it is just trying to vent and that won't help anyone nor anything.

Publicly available: the various NanoVNA applications written in Python.

But at some of my customers the problems to create distributable software using Python are even bigger. To the extend that software gets distributed as a VM image  .

[janoc]

Publicly available: the various NanoVNA applications written in Python.

Could you give me a specific pointer which one? I am not NanoVNA user so I don't know these.

The official stuff here is distributed as binaries which work fine for me (at least starts - I don't have a NanoVNA to test):
https://nanorfe.com/nanovna-v2-software.html

I have also tried NanoVNA Saver from here:
https://github.com/nanovna/nanovna-saver-v2-support


$ git clone https://github.com/nanovna/nanovna-saver-v2-support.git
$ cd nanovna-saver-v2-support/
$ python -m venv .venv
$ . .venv/bin/activate
$ pip install -r requirements.txt
Collecting scipy
  Using cached scipy-1.8.1-cp38-cp38-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl (41.6 MB)
Collecting pyqt5
  Using cached PyQt5-5.15.7-cp37-abi3-manylinux1_x86_64.whl (8.4 MB)
Collecting pyserial
  Using cached pyserial-3.5-py2.py3-none-any.whl (90 kB)
Collecting numpy
  Using cached numpy-1.23.1-cp38-cp38-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl (17.1 MB)
Collecting PyQt5-sip<13,>=12.11
  Using cached PyQt5_sip-12.11.0-cp38-cp38-manylinux1_x86_64.whl (361 kB)
Collecting PyQt5-Qt5>=5.15.0
  Using cached PyQt5_Qt5-5.15.2-py3-none-manylinux2014_x86_64.whl (59.9 MB)
Installing collected packages: PyQt5-sip, PyQt5-Qt5, numpy, scipy, pyserial, pyqt5
Successfully installed PyQt5-Qt5-5.15.2 PyQt5-sip-12.11.0 numpy-1.23.1 pyqt5-5.15.7 pyserial-3.5 scipy-1.8.1

$ python nanovna-saver.py
NanoVNASaver 0.2.2
Copyright (C) 2019 Rune B. Broberg
This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
This program is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3


(and the program pops up)

And this is building/running the application from source, mind you, not a distributable executable. Moreover, it is an application that has Qt GUI and uses Numpy for number crunching, thus having binary dependencies. No issues at all.

What is important when doing something like this is that you create and perform the installation using a virtual environment (not a VM - Python virtual environment).

That's what these two lines do:

$ python -m venv .venv
$ . .venv/bin/activate


That will ensure that it will put its dependencies and binaries into the .venv folder in the current directory (in my case) and not use whatever libraries you may have installed system-wide (and which could conflict because of incompatible versions, etc.). In my case it is still using system Python 3.8.12 which is fairly old - and no problems at all.

But at some of my customers the problems to create distributable software using Python are even bigger. To the extend that software gets distributed as a VM image  .

Well, that's frankly a bit ridiculous. But I think that points more to the people not being familiar with the tools and ecosystem than any sort of failure or problem with the language.

OTOH, sometimes it is more practical to ship a VM image when you have a ton of things to ship and setup (regardless of whether it is Python or whatever). Start the VM and you are ready to go as opposed to an hour or two spent installing and configuring.

[nctnico]

The problem I typically run into that some of the Python modules need very specific versions of system libraries which may not even exist for Debian because the developer uses Python from Ubuntu.

[janoc]

The problem I typically run into that some of the Python modules need very specific versions of system libraries which may not even exist for Debian because the developer uses Python from Ubuntu.

That sounds a bit weird - that would matter only if the developer actually ships a binary of something - maybe a custom C library that they use from Python.

If you do like I did above - installing the requirements/dependencies into a virtual env using pip - then it should download whatever it needs, completely ignoring whatever you do or don't have on your system (well apart from Python itself). That should cover at least the common dependencies.

If whatever you are installing doesn't have a proper setup.py or requirements.txt or Pipfile to allow that then go and hit the author of that module with something heavy. That's squarely their fault.

[Karel]

Asking them to support also an OS that is not supported anymore by the manufacturer

You're just not getting it, are you? I am NOT asking them to support an OS that.. blah blah. I am merely asking them not to deliverately break it.

Do you not see the difference?

Yes, I see the difference and I feel your pain.
The reality is that you can ask as much as you want but microsoft apparently doesn't care.
What they (microsoft) want is that you switch to W10/W11.
Unfortunately for you, it's their product and they can do with it whatever they want.
Tech giants have no moral or ethics, there only goal is to please their shareholders.

Only drug dealers and software companies call their customers "users".

[SiliconWizard]

Only drug dealers and software companies call their customers "users".

Public services as well. Not that there isn't some occasional resemblance.

[free_electron]

software companies call their customers "users".

you have to watch out when IT/software people start  calling them "Local users" ... internally they write it as LUSER

[nctnico]

The problem I typically run into that some of the Python modules need very specific versions of system libraries which may not even exist for Debian because the developer uses Python from Ubuntu.

That sounds a bit weird - that would matter only if the developer actually ships a binary of something - maybe a custom C library that they use from Python.

If you do like I did above - installing the requirements/dependencies into a virtual env using pip - then it should download whatever it needs, completely ignoring whatever you do or don't have on your system (well apart from Python itself). That should cover at least the common dependencies.

If whatever you are installing doesn't have a proper setup.py or requirements.txt or Pipfile to allow that then go and hit the author of that module with something heavy. That's squarely their fault.

Probably but that doesn't solve my immediate problem. And -if I may move the goal posts a little bit-, that makes it a lot of work to share scripts that are meant to do simple tasks like automating processing measurement data into a graph. I have run into problems getting such relatively simple Python programs to work on different computers as well. Personally I have given up on Python as a software development language because it just is too much hassle to distribute the resulting programs. I do use Python but only for simple scripts to read some data from test equipment.

[janoc]

Probably but that doesn't solve my immediate problem. And -if I may move the goal posts a little bit-, that makes it a lot of work to share scripts that are meant to do simple tasks like automating processing measurement data into a graph. I have run into problems getting such relatively simple Python programs to work on different computers as well. Personally I have given up on Python as a software development language because it just is too much hassle to distribute the resulting programs. I do use Python but only for simple scripts to read some data from test equipment.

Well, if you want to distribute scripts that just display graphs, etc. you have two options:

- Look into Jupyter notebooks. Those are meant to allow distributing documents and simple (and not so simple) programs that are not quite full applications.

If you want your code to be portable and easy to distribute then you can either:

- Use only standard library functionality and make sure dependencies are easy to install - i.e. the install/setup scripts are in place so that it is easy for the user of your code to actually install any dependencies/requirements.

- Compile the whole thing into a binary. Then it is self contained, including dependencies and you don't have the problem. End user of it doesn't even need Python, it is basically a normal executable as anything else.

- Target only a single distribution of Python along with whatever they bundle as dependencies - e.g. Conda. I wouldn't recommend doing this but if you can standardize on it, it could simplify your life.

But without being specific of what exactly do you have problems with it is difficult to help you. 

because it just is too much hassle to distribute the resulting programs.

Well, that's like saying Matlab programs are a hassle to distribute because, gasp, they require Matlab and toolboxes and a license and what not. Sorry but that's just the nature of the beast. I haven't noticed that has stopped Matlab's adoption - and Matlab programs are probably order of magnitude worse written than an average piece of Python code.

You want "simple", so don't want to deal with software packaging and tooling to actually make your application easy to distribute - and at the same time you need external dependencies that are a mess to install because you didn't do your homework and the application isn't set up properly?

That doesn't work. Yes, distributing software is a complex problem. One can either accept it and deal with it (and learn the tools) - or blame the tools but you will hit the same problems with other tooling, because the problem really isn't about the language and tools 

[onsenwombat]

What... what am I missing here? So new versions won't be added under Win7 any more? Big deal, no?
The old stuff still works, and is there for everyone to install, even from their official site? What else is there to ask for? Yes, I know you have your legacy software running in production. It wasn't too long ago when I genuinely had my hands on a WinNT station desperately begging for retirement, but the company couldn't been arsed to port the stuff anywhere, so there it was - running hopefully until the EOL finally hits the floor.
Yes, MS wants to kill Win7 by whatever means they have on their disposal, and that's totally fine even though I absolutely loathe Win10 (and lord knows what kind of seizures I'll be getting from 11 eventually). And yes, such transitions will be hell for some poor developers, but here's the thing. If your system cannot be left alone running without a single update, like that poor WinNT bastard of mine, then you should know from the get-go that you will face platform, OS, and whatnot going obsolete, and need to get your hands dirty. If that puts you in the world of shit, then it was you who got yourself there all along.

[PlainName]

What... what am I missing here?

Half a cup of empathy with a splash of humility.

[eugene]

What... what am I missing here?

Half a cup of empathy with a splash of humility.

I don't know. Remember the old saying "if it's not broke, don't fix it"? The world has become crazy for updating software. But, I know of several machines in industrial settings that are happily running WinXP with whatever software the machine came with. Just don't change anything and it will continue to function (It's even possible to get replacement parts for the old hardware, so make sure the HD is backed up.) Yet people insist on updating software, drivers, even entire operating systems. Why? Just stop doing that.

It's true that some new software won't run on old systems. But if you have an old system with old software that runs well, then just leave it alone. If you need to run new software, then get a newer computer. This is the way it has been for as long as personal computers have existed.

[PlainName]

If you need to run new software, then get a newer computer. This is the way it has been for as long as personal computers have existed.

No, it hasn't. The opposite is the case: Microsoft got where it is, as has Apple, because of backwards compatibility. By contrast, those systems that required thousand-quid hardware investment every time software was updated are... well, can you name one?

There is nothing wrong with my hardware. Other than Microsoft preventing use of the onboard graphics if I don't run Windows 10, of course. The problem there is the hardware is too new!

[eugene]

If you need to run new software, then get a newer computer. This is the way it has been for as long as personal computers have existed.

No, it hasn't. The opposite is the case: Microsoft got where it is, as has Apple, because of backwards compatibility. By contrast, those systems that required thousand-quid hardware investment every time software was updated are... well, can you name one?

Not sure what you're asking. My entire point is to NOT update software beyond the capabilities of the hardware. If the hardware and software are running well together, but things break when you update something (software or hardware) then it's your fault. Don't make the upgrades.

There is nothing wrong with my hardware. Other than Microsoft preventing use of the onboard graphics if I don't run Windows 10, of course. The problem there is the hardware is too new!

Again, I'm not sure I understand. Since you say onboard graphics, I'll assume you bought a computer designed to run Win 10 and now you want to install Win 7. That's like complaining that your new 2022 Vauxhall won't accept parts from your 1999 model. If you want to drive a 1999 Vauxhall, then get one of those.