> Thank you, I appreciate the reply, but taking a bunch of dependencies is not reasaonable. It is as if you said "Does your shell script use associative arrays? Just install bash 4 on your users machines..."
You can writes compatible Python code without using any extensions, I did that myself, but those tools just make it easier.
> I guess what I'm saying is that Python 2 had an opportunity to fill the Perl/sh ubiquity niche (installed by default on Linux/macOS/FreeBSD!), but squandered it with the 2->3 incompatibilities.
Since you mentioned FreeBSD I need to add that while ago they had an effort to remove any scripting language from the base system. So FreeBSD doesn't come with Perl, Python, Ruby etc preinstalled.
Actually, I think that was a really good decision. No need to worry that system depends on some old Python module which if you upgrade, you can break it.
Instead, you need python3.6? You install that version, you realize that something else needs python2.7? You install python2.7 side by side. In fact you can install all available versions without conflicts or worrying that something will break.
You can writes compatible Python code without using any extensions, I did that myself, but those tools just make it easier.
> I guess what I'm saying is that Python 2 had an opportunity to fill the Perl/sh ubiquity niche (installed by default on Linux/macOS/FreeBSD!), but squandered it with the 2->3 incompatibilities.
Since you mentioned FreeBSD I need to add that while ago they had an effort to remove any scripting language from the base system. So FreeBSD doesn't come with Perl, Python, Ruby etc preinstalled.
Actually, I think that was a really good decision. No need to worry that system depends on some old Python module which if you upgrade, you can break it.
Instead, you need python3.6? You install that version, you realize that something else needs python2.7? You install python2.7 side by side. In fact you can install all available versions without conflicts or worrying that something will break.