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.
back
> 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.
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.