374: Python's Long Tail

As Python 2's demise draws near we reflect on Python's popularity, the growing adoption of static typing, and why the Python 3 transition took so long.

Plus Apple's audacious app store tactics, Google's troubles with Typescript, and more!

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Links:

• Correction: macOS and Zsh — I believe the new macOS Catalina shell is zsh.
• Feedback: What about Perl 6? — Last episode (373) that's on about shell scripting, interpreted  languages, repl & cli, made me think about Perl 6.
• Feedback: Pry and a Pick — In the previous episode I was amazed to hear that Mike had never used pry before! It's one of the first things I show off to people when introducing them to Ruby.
• Feedback: Learning Web Dev — I feel woefully unready and I was wondering if either of you had suggestions for structured content around web dev/design that I could use to augment my learning? I've been using Pluralsight, which is great, and I'd be curious to know what else you might suggest.
• Google feedback on TypeScript 3.5 — We know and expect every TypeScript upgrade to involve some work. For example, improvements to the standard library are expected and welcomed by us, even though they may mean removing similar but incompatible definitions from our own code base. However, TypeScript 3.5 was a lot more work for us than other recent TypeScript upgrades.
• Apple has copied some of the most popular apps in the App Store for its iPhone, iPad and other software updates - The Washington Post — Apple plans this month to incorporate some of Clue’s core functionality such as fertility and period prediction into its own Health app that comes pre-installed in every iPhone and is free — unlike Clue, which is free to download but earns money by selling subscriptions and services within its app. Apple’s past incorporation of functionality included in other third-party apps has often led to their demise.
• How Apple’s Apps Topped Rivals in the App Store It Controls - The New York Times — But as Apple has become one of the largest competitors on a platform that it controls, suspicions that the company has been tipping the scales in its own favor are at the heart of antitrust complaints in the United States, Europe and Russia.
• Sunsetting Python 2 | Python.org — We have decided that January 1, 2020, will be the day that we sunset Python 2. That means that we will not improve it anymore after that day, even if someone finds a security problem in it. You should upgrade to Python 3 as soon as you can.
• Python 2.7 Countdown
• Porting Python 2 Code to Python 3
• Our journey to type checking 4 million lines of Python | Dropbox Tech Blog — Dropbox is a big user of Python. It’s our most widely used language both for backend services and the desktop client app (we are also heavy users of Go, TypeScript, and Rust). At our scale—millions of lines of Python—the dynamic typing in Python made code needlessly hard to understand and started to seriously impact productivity. T
• ProjectPSX: Experimental C# Playstation Emulator — ProjectPSX is a C# coded emulator of the original Sony Playstation (Playstation 1/PS1/PSX)
• junegunn/fzf — fzf is a general-purpose command-line fuzzy finder.