As part of personal development I’d love to try using python 3, but I have no idea where to start, and showing a massive document like the one you embedded is no inspiration (and I assume that wasn’t your goal, either). I’ve encountered someone with a strong python 2 bias, and I have paid no attention to whatever struggle is going on, but I’d hoped for some positive notions about why I should switch and thus deal with whatever hassles that such a change requires. I’ve done a bit of browsing over the years on the topic, but most of the writing seems to be focused on the conflict and not on moving people like me to switch, so it would be nice to find some links to good articles or books on switching to 3.

This is a fundamental risk of the use of free (as in beer) software. Simply put, if you have specific requirements on some piece of software, particularly if it is mission-critical software, then you need to pay someone to fulfil them, rather than vaguely hope that the whims and dreams of volunteer developers will happen to align with yours.

However, in your point about Python 3 needing better PR, I think you’re ignoring the commercial vendors that integrate Python. There is no better PR than Python 3 being the interpreter integrated in to software packages instead of Python 2. Commercial graphics software, like Maya, Nuke, Katana, etc. all embed a python 2.7 interpreter. They write API’s against it for scripting software to control features, and handle repetitive tasks. Similar things happen with Lua, and TCL, too. My intro to Python was through these packages. This produces a lot of people interested in working in Python for other tasks. That it becomes more integrated with other tools, and is used in other parts of the pipeline at a facility. It has a top-down effect that spreads from the interpreter being used in the commercial software package. These are not the users that are the most familiar to the python community at large because most things are web centric. I can only assume that other commercial applications of Python have a similar, lingering quality with Python 2.

Right now, I know enough to run twisted virtual servers for my personal site, write my own static blogging platform, do really tiny, dumb things –but I do them all with Python 2 because that is what’s most familiar to me and what I will encounter in a work environment.

If the day comes when Maya, Nuke, Katana, etc. start making decisions about picking another scripting language, then will they pick Python 3? I’m not sure. I’d logically stick with what I was using at work.

I follow Armin’s blog and twitter account closely, and I don’t find it encouraging. I don’t see the friendly PR outreach to people having problems. I do see very cross essays being written about people adopting that I can not relate to. The 192-page jeopardy component is amusing, I’ll grant that for sure, but it does very little to actually advocate why commercial vendors should switch, nor does it provide much incentive for the users of those commercial platforms to pressure the vendors in to switching versions.

It is an unpleasant task that no one really wants to volunteer for — I certainly would not want to even if I was competent enough. That’s the problem though, Python 3 makes me feel like even more of an outsider than Python 2. I don’t doubt the huge improvements that have been made, but I lack the ability to articulate any of them over Python 2 if someone were to ask me.

Perhaps it is precisely because this is a programming language by the volunteers, for the volunteers, that I’ll never be able to fully grasp all the of “why” of it. I do laud every one of them for their tireless work, and for the commitment to extend security patches for 2.7.x. I just lament that outreach mostly exists in trading blog post rebottles, or really dense documentation. Like Mulder’s office poster: I want to believe.

Just curious, what kinds of projects do you do with Python 3? Server-side web apps? Desktop GUI apps (if so, with what toolkit)? Something else?

I compiled a list of the 10 best features of Python 3 at http://asmeurer.github.io/python3-presentation/slides.html#1. These are specifically features that are not backwards compatible; it is impossible to write Python 2 compliant code that uses them. The problem isn’t that there are no carrots in Python 3. The problem is that no one knows what they are, because no one uses Python 3.

Regarding using both, I recommend just using Anaconda. The conda package manager makes switching between versions of Python super easy (full disclosure, I work for Continuum on the conda package manager).

Regarding the forking of Python 2, you are right on. I suspect no one has actually forked Python 2 because anyone who knows enough about CPython to do the fork would know enough to know how much better Python 3 is than Python 2, and would never ever want to see Python 2 again. There’s a reason the core Python devs despise Python 2.