Found out that Python 2 still powers like 30% of big company systems

I was digging through some old docs last week for a beginner tutorial I'm writing and stumbled on a stat that blew my mind. Apparently even in 2024, tons of major companies still have Python 2 code running in production, despite it being 'dead' since 2020. I found the number on some Stack Overflow survey breakdown. Has anyone else run into this while working on legacy stuff or am I just late to the party?

3 comments

3 Comments

michael_green441mo ago

I once found a script from 2009 running payroll for like 400 people and it was held together with duct tape and the author's old comments in all caps. If it prints money and doesn't catch fire, apparently it's not legacy, it's "stable.

kai_webb911mo ago

Oh man, that Python 2 stat takes me back to when I was helping a friend move their servers a few years ago. We found this old terminal running some inventory script that hadn't been touched since 2015, and it was literally keeping their warehouse running. They were too scared to touch it because nobody remembered how it worked or what it did exactly. It's wild how these old systems just keep chugging along in the background while everyone uses shiny new tools. Makes you wonder what else is still running on ancient code that nobody wants to admit exists.

shane_clark1mo ago

Yeah, @kai_webb91, I used to be one of those people who thought old code was just lazy or outdated. Then I took a job at a company that had a billing system from like 2003 running on some ancient Perl setup. Nobody knew how to fix it if it broke, but it processed thousands of orders a day without a hitch. That really changed my mind about this stuff - sometimes old and ugly is better than new and broken. It's scary how much of the world still runs on code that's older than some of the people maintaining it.