python also has a pretty big standard library. I don&#x27;t have much specific experience before python 2.5, but I do know that code written for python 2.5 (released in 2006) is just about 100% compatible with python 2.7 which still has support and patch releases. Backwards compatibility was broken once in the last decade, for 3.x.<p>Or consider gtk+. 2.x was backwards ABI (binary!) compatible for over a decade. Compatibility was broken once in the last decade, for 3.x (for applications. for themes and windowing environments is a different story unfortunately.) So programs written for 2.10 or so still work today with (still continuing) recent releases of 2.x.