Do programs themselves use symbolic links, or are they just for users?

Question

For example, when I type python it runs python2 because for me, /usr/bin/python is linked to /usr/bin/python2.7
But does this affect programs? If there are programs on my system that need python 2, and I change /usr/bin/python to be linked to python 3 instead of 2, would those programs break?
Or do programs not use things in  /usr/bin? I would expect that they don't, since /usr/bin seems to be meant just for user commands, but I want to be sure

muru · Answer

If there are programs that need Python 2, they should be explicitly using /usr/bin/python2 (or similar) instead of the plain /usr/bin/python. However, there might be some that haven't been updated, and still use /usr/bin/python. Those could very well break.
If you're on Ubuntu 20.04 or newer, the python-is-python3 explicitly makes /usr/bin/python be Python 3. On older releases, I wouldn't recommend changing that symlink.

Do programs themselves use symbolic links, or are they just for users?

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