[ase-users] [EXTERNAL] Python3.5 vs 3.6 support

[Hermes, Eric]

On Tuesday, February 25, 2020 7:16:06 AM PST Ask Hjorth Larsen via ase-users 
wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> Do you think we should switch to requiring Python3.6+ instead of
> Python3.5+ as now?  Python3.6 has f-strings, insertion-ordered dicts,
> and important improvements to type annotations.

So, insertion-order dicts are considered an "implementation detail" in Python 
3.6. It's only an official language feature in Python 3.7+. Practically 
speaking, this may be a distinction without a difference, but generally I 
think we ought not to rely on "unofficial" behavior like this.

That said, I would very much like to rely on insertion-order dicts, because I 
think that may make it easier to generate IO routines for codes where order 
matters.

Maybe we can move to Python 3.7 in 2029 when CentOS 8 reaches EOL :)

Or, maybe we can just look at pypi.org statistics to see which version of 
Python our users are using.

> 
> Are there any major distros that only provide python3.5 or
> particularly stubborn sysadmins?
> 
> Best regards
> Ask
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-- 
Eric Hermes
Postdoctoral Researcher
Sandia National Laboratories