Nobody else answering this question seems to have read the article.
> Like DAL, the OpenIPC library includes a command-line interface (CLI), written in Python and provided as a library for Python as part of Intel System Studio, which can be installed on the system with the help of pip.
Intel System Studio doesn't ship its own python, it depends on the OS' python version. So here we have an industry-infra dependency on python, and these typically seem to still be stuck in 2.7 land.
Python is being used here to actually wrap/coordinate the components that do the JTAG handshake. A neat approach, just using a whole programming language as the REPL. I like it. But this is one situation where I'm going to be very conservative with the tooling, as I don't want to break my system! :)
So, that's the real reason why.
Also; the repo actually has, right in view, a recent commit message of "fix for Python 3 compatibiliy". The authors are clearly just using 2.7 because ISS requires it and considering the bigger picture of tinkering with PoCs, mucking about with multiple Python versions seems like a waste of cycles and unnecessary management+verification of moving parts (I don't savor the idea of figuring out "ok how do I tell ISS where 2.7 is and how do I absolutely make sure it's avoiding 3.0?").
--
HN, please endeavor to pursue higher quality discussion. Devolving into meta is an excellent way to encourage stagnation. (I know this sounds a bit of a self-righteous thing to say but it's tricky to objectively articulate.)
Agreed. Nothing repels an actual hardware hacker harder than finding that the reaction to a significant finding consists mainly of bikesheding the python version of his concept script
Python 3 is ten (!) years old and perfectly usable, but it suffers from a well-known, but curious problem where people who occasionally use Python for some light scripting tend to go for Python 2.7. Rarely it's a choice made because of library availability, more often it is because of the perceived ubiquity of Python 2.7 installs on the target user's computer or simply because of a mindset where Python 2.7 is good enough and getting the hang of Python 3 seems like a huge obstacle (it isn't).
I'd love to know why this project specifically chose Python 2.7 too. Python 2 reaches its end of life in 2020, any new Python code should really be written in Python 3.
By the way, if you want to prevent getting a bunch of downvotes like your comment did, be polite! Not including any capitalization or punctuation is considered downright rude by many. Your text reads like a robot's printout.
It's not a huge obstacle, but it _is_ an obstacle.
I'm not a Python programmer, but I can find my way around without much issue. Still, from where I'm sitting all that stuff about envs and the 2, 3 or 4 redundant, overriden, or deprecated mix of solutions sounds strange to me, I don't really want to buy into that just yet (I need Python like once per month, no more). For the casual programmer ("just want to change this line and run, please") it's just a block in the road that virtually all instructions you might see on any random README in Github might tell you to use "pip install..." but then you have to second guess if they mean "pip2" or "pip3", and whether they assume you'll be running with v2 or v3, maybe they tell you to run "pip install something" (which runs pip2), then in the script there is a Python 3 shebang... the installed dependency won't be found and now you have to understand all this mess if you want to continue.
This is in Ubuntu, where the system's "python" is Python 2, and you need to explicitly add a "3" to all your commands if you want to run v3. I'm sure there are clever ways to solve the issue, but I bet they'll break some use case. I'd just rather none of this nonsense existed at all, then no funny workarounds would be needed.
I wonder, how come other languages are able to slowly introduce some breaking changes over time (I'd swear Ruby was mentioned in some other HN thread about doing this) but not cause this kind of mess (as perceived from my humble external point of view)?
You forgot one reason not to switch from 2 to 3: Zero benefit. Nothing python 3 does would benefit my scripts to any extend over just using python 2 as I always did. Is learning 3 a huge hurdle? No, it is however in some cases completely unnecessary.
> I'd love to know why this project specifically chose Python 2.7 too.
My guess is they just went with whatever was most convenient and worked. I doubt if this kind of questions were even on the radar. It's security research, not a production website. In research you tend to go with whatever tool does the job.
Look at the overall complexity of this work. Maybe the author simply felt more confident with Python 2. You take whatever shortcuts that make things simpler, even if it means using 20 year old software.
That's called "dealing with the reality of international text instead of burying your head in the sand," isn't it? Bytes are not text any more than bytes are a picture or bytes are a sound recording; it is only in the context of an encoding that bytes can be interpreted as something more.
For that matter, given the inexplicable popularity of emojis, it isn't even a matter of international text anymore.
exikyut|7 years ago
> Like DAL, the OpenIPC library includes a command-line interface (CLI), written in Python and provided as a library for Python as part of Intel System Studio, which can be installed on the system with the help of pip.
Intel System Studio doesn't ship its own python, it depends on the OS' python version. So here we have an industry-infra dependency on python, and these typically seem to still be stuck in 2.7 land.
Python is being used here to actually wrap/coordinate the components that do the JTAG handshake. A neat approach, just using a whole programming language as the REPL. I like it. But this is one situation where I'm going to be very conservative with the tooling, as I don't want to break my system! :)
So, that's the real reason why.
Also; the repo actually has, right in view, a recent commit message of "fix for Python 3 compatibiliy". The authors are clearly just using 2.7 because ISS requires it and considering the bigger picture of tinkering with PoCs, mucking about with multiple Python versions seems like a waste of cycles and unnecessary management+verification of moving parts (I don't savor the idea of figuring out "ok how do I tell ISS where 2.7 is and how do I absolutely make sure it's avoiding 3.0?").
--
HN, please endeavor to pursue higher quality discussion. Devolving into meta is an excellent way to encourage stagnation. (I know this sounds a bit of a self-righteous thing to say but it's tricky to objectively articulate.)
someguydave|7 years ago
Freak_NL|7 years ago
I'd love to know why this project specifically chose Python 2.7 too. Python 2 reaches its end of life in 2020, any new Python code should really be written in Python 3.
By the way, if you want to prevent getting a bunch of downvotes like your comment did, be polite! Not including any capitalization or punctuation is considered downright rude by many. Your text reads like a robot's printout.
j1elo|7 years ago
I'm not a Python programmer, but I can find my way around without much issue. Still, from where I'm sitting all that stuff about envs and the 2, 3 or 4 redundant, overriden, or deprecated mix of solutions sounds strange to me, I don't really want to buy into that just yet (I need Python like once per month, no more). For the casual programmer ("just want to change this line and run, please") it's just a block in the road that virtually all instructions you might see on any random README in Github might tell you to use "pip install..." but then you have to second guess if they mean "pip2" or "pip3", and whether they assume you'll be running with v2 or v3, maybe they tell you to run "pip install something" (which runs pip2), then in the script there is a Python 3 shebang... the installed dependency won't be found and now you have to understand all this mess if you want to continue.
This is in Ubuntu, where the system's "python" is Python 2, and you need to explicitly add a "3" to all your commands if you want to run v3. I'm sure there are clever ways to solve the issue, but I bet they'll break some use case. I'd just rather none of this nonsense existed at all, then no funny workarounds would be needed.
I wonder, how come other languages are able to slowly introduce some breaking changes over time (I'd swear Ruby was mentioned in some other HN thread about doing this) but not cause this kind of mess (as perceived from my humble external point of view)?
josefx|7 years ago
avian|7 years ago
My guess is they just went with whatever was most convenient and worked. I doubt if this kind of questions were even on the radar. It's security research, not a production website. In research you tend to go with whatever tool does the job.
Look at the overall complexity of this work. Maybe the author simply felt more confident with Python 2. You take whatever shortcuts that make things simpler, even if it means using 20 year old software.
gaius|7 years ago
It’s not just “perceived”, it is actual reality e.g. on CentOS. If you need compatibility still the best option is 2, regardless.
_0w8t|7 years ago
rasz|7 years ago
marssaxman|7 years ago
For that matter, given the inexplicable popularity of emojis, it isn't even a matter of international text anymore.
draw_down|7 years ago
[deleted]
CamperBob2|7 years ago
kencausey|7 years ago