Dimensional Data

Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters. This week: VS Code drops support for Python 3.7, Windows drops VBScript, and Europe plans the fastest ARM supercomputer. 1. Python Extension for Visual Studio Code Kills 3.7 First up this week: Microsoft deprecates Python 3.7 support in Visual Studio Code’s Python extension. It’ll probably continue to work for a while, though (emphasis on the “probably”). Analysis: Obsolete scripting language is obsolete If you’re still using 3.7, why? It’s time to move on: 3.12 is the new hotness. Even 3.8 is living on borrowed time. Priya Walia: Microsoft Bids Farewell To Python 3.7 “Growing influence of the Python language”Python 3.7, despite reaching its end of life in June, remains a highly popular version among developers. … Microsoft expects the extension to continue functioning unofficially with Python 3.7 for the foreseeable future, but there are no guarantees that everything will work smoothly without the backing of official support.…Microsoft’s recent launch of Python scripting within Excel underscores the growing influence of the Python language across various domains. The move opens up new avenues for Python developers to work with data within the popular spreadsheet software. However, it’s not all smooth sailing, as recent security flaws in certain Python packages have posed challenges. Python? Isn’t that a toy language? This Anonymous Coward says otherwise: Ha, tell that to Instagram, or Spotify, or Nextdoor, or Disqus, or BitBucket, or DropBox, or Pinterest, or YouTube. Or to the data science field, or mathematicians, or the Artificial Intelligence crowd.…Our current production is running 3.10 but we’re looking forward to moving it to Python 3.11 (3.12 being a little too new) because [of] the speed increases of up to 60%. … If you’re still somewhere pre 3.11, try to jump straight to 3.11.6.…The main improvements … are interpreter and compiler improvements to create faster bytecode for execution, sometimes new features to write code more efficiently, and the occasional fix to remove ambiguity. I’ve been running Python in production for four years now migrating from 3.8 -> 3.9 -> 3.10 and soon to 3.11 and so far we have never had to make any changes to our codebase to work with a new update of the language. And sodul says Python’s reputation for breaking backward compatibility is old news: Most … code that was written for Python 3.7 will run just fine in 3.12. … We upgrade once a year and most issues we have are related to third party SDKs that are too opinionated about their own dependencies. We do have breaking changes, but mostly we find pre-existing bugs that get uncovered thanks to better type annotation, which is vital in larger Python projects. 2. Windows Kills VBScript Microsoft is also deprecating VBScript in the Windows client. It’ll probably continue to work for a while as an on-demand feature, though (emphasis on the “probably”). Analysis: Obsolete scripting language is obsolete If you’re still using VBScript, why? It’s time to move on: PowerShell is the new hotness—it’s even cross platform. Sergiu Gatlan: Microsoft to kill off VBScript in Windows “Malware campaigns”VBScript (also known as Visual Basic Script or Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition) is a programming language similar to Visual Basic or Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and […]