The other day I was looking at the release notes for the recently published release 1.8 of NumPy, the library that is the basis for most of the Scientific Python ecosystem. As usual, it contains a list of new features and improvements, but also sections such as "dropped support" (for Python 2.4 and 2.5) and "future changes", to be understood as "incompatible changes that you should start to prepare for". Dropping support for old Python releases is understandable: maintaining compatibility and...