@HaraldvonBlauzahn ROFL, couldn't stop laughing.
Interviewer: AI, AI, AI
Guido: 🤦♀️ , 🤦♀️ , 🤦♀️
this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2025
40 points (100.0% liked)
Programming
23095 readers
258 users here now
Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!
Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.
Hope you enjoy the instance!
Rules
Rules
- Follow the programming.dev instance rules
- Keep content related to programming in some way
- If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos
Wormhole
Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
First interview from him I've read in a long time. He comes over as very down-to-earth, honest and humble. And he is not mincing words about his opinion on the AI hype.
Another thing, he confirms something I was worried about, in his comments on parallelism / Python without the Global Interpreter Lock (aka GIL): Some developments in the language serve rather the big companies, than the community and open source projects. For example, lock-less multi-threading in Python serves mostly the largest companies, while having little value for small projects.
Personally, I think this was already visible in the 2/3 transition: It would have been possible to make Python 3 backwards-compatible (as an example, SBCL added Unicode support without breaking compatibility, and in the same way Python's Numpy was a compatible drop-in replacement for the old Numeric module).
But the dominant Python users were not interested in making Python 3 backwards-compatible. Now, mega-corporations with an overkill of money, or Silicon Valley start-ups which are unlikely to survive their third year, do not need backwards-compatibility so much. On the other hand, smaller community projects and above all the scientific community need it urgently. Just as an example: The Python Wiki is a MoinMoin wiki. MoinMoin was written in Python 2, and the maintainers did so far not have the resources to port it to Python 3. That's a pity because it is the most, if not the only full-featured and easy to manage wiki software written in Python, and the situation can be seen as an example how the influence of big corporations like Google is killing the open web.
Another thing, he confirms something I was worried about, in his comments on parallelism / Python without the Global Interpreter Lock (aka GIL): Some developments in the language serve rather the big companies, than the community and open source projects. For example, lock-less multi-threading in Python serves mostly the largest companies, while having little value for small projects.
Absolutely agree. The significance of the GIL is heavily overstated in my opinion. There's a narrow set of use-cases where it matters, ie. if you must use threads and something like multiprocessing or a message queue (ie. Celery) doesn't do what you need. These are pretty rare circumstances, from my experience at least.
We have a Python 2, Django 1.4.22 webapp, with no realistic way to port it to Python 3, so now the only viable option is a full rewrite. Which will take a lot of time.
Are you still actively working on/developing on the project?
Skipping new developments can be fine. Moving slow or not at all can mean stability and predictability.
The biggest issue is missed security updates, if they exist, or a lack of identification and fixing of open security issues.
And, of course, developer convenience if the project is still being actively worked on.
Mostly fixing stuff, of which there is a lot after moving servers (from a Debian 8 host to a Debian 13 VM with Debian 8 Repos, and different mail servers).
And yeah, Python 2 + Django 1.4 has many vulns, and mitigating them is a whole project.