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by AlexeyBrin·9y ago·view on hn ↗
> You can still program in C 89 or FORTRAN 77 or COBOL 74 (and no doubt there is somebody still supporting compilers and runtimes for those), but they are all obsolete standards.

The situation with C89 and Fortran 77 is completely different than what you see today with Python 2 vs Python 3. For 99.9999% of C89 and Fortran 77 code you can build the old code with new C and Fortran compilers and use it from today's standards. You can take a piece of code written 30 years ago, recompile it and it usually works.

1 comments
I don't disagree it is different. My argument was that a new release of compiler for an obsolete standard doesn't cause the standard not to be obsolete.

I am pretty sure there is theoretical way to run Python 2 code alongside Python 3 code, but they simply decided it's not worth the effort.

Edit: I think historically Python 2/3 divide is more akin to Maclisp/Common Lisp divide, but in the latter, the situation was even more complicated. But I doubt you can just take Maclisp code and run it on Common Lisp implementation, despite that fact that it was meant as a successor.