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I was checking out the tags today, and I think we could clean up a couple tags. For all three suggestions, I think a synonym should suffice. I was unable to propose them, as version-specific tags can only be proposed by moderators.

I ran into a similar meta request for to be synonymized, and this is just an expansion.

For all three, I really agree with this clean up proposal.

Note: I chose not because it's the most recent language update. I'm not sure what to do about . Suggestions?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ I see no reason python2.7 shouldn't be synonymized if python3 is. \$\endgroup\$
    – RubberDuck
    Jul 31, 2014 at 4:29
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    \$\begingroup\$ I agree with ckuhn203. If anything, the newest version should be un-synonymized at least until a newer version comes out. But I don't like version-specific tags. \$\endgroup\$
    – nhgrif
    Jul 31, 2014 at 22:20

1 Answer 1

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I would caution against making a sweeping decision that applies to all language-version tags.

Some languages, like , are conservative, and introduce new features with very few incompatible changes between major versions. It makes sense to abolish .

Other languages are more innovative. For example, has introduced breaking changes from Python 2 to 3. Sometimes, it is immediately clear from context whether code targets Python 2 or Python 3, sometimes it is not obvious, and some code runs flawlessly on both. Therefore, the and tags are situationally useful, if the author wants to specify the language version. Therefore, for Python at least, I think that the language-version tags should be used at the discretion of the author or editor of each question — the tags should be neither mandatory, synonymized, nor merged.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Would it be fair to make this tags similar as well as eliminate the subversion? [python-2.x], [python-3.x]? Or are there drastic changes between subversions of Python that would warrant the subversions having their own tags as well? \$\endgroup\$
    – nhgrif
    Aug 6, 2014 at 22:20
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    \$\begingroup\$ @nhgrif I think that that would be a good move. There is little benefit to distinguishing between Python 2.6 and 2.7. \$\endgroup\$ Aug 6, 2014 at 22:22
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    \$\begingroup\$ @nhgrif I also agree with that. There aren't many situations where you can't install the latest subversion without introducing breaking changes. If needed, the users can still specify the exact subversion needed for their code, but it would be better to have python-2.x and python-3.x. While the .x part is not essential, it helps to make it explicit that all the subversions are taken into account. \$\endgroup\$
    – Morwenn
    Aug 7, 2014 at 8:51

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