Why Python 3?

[Paul Rubin]

Anthony Papillion <papillion at gmail.com> writes:
> Some say 'Python 3 is the future, use it for everything now' and other
> say 'Python 3 is the future but you can't do everything in it now so
> use Python 2'.

Python 3 is generally better than Python 2, except for a few packages
that haven't been ported.

That said, I don't know anyone who actually uses Python 3.  I don't
think it's a matter of wanting to use some problematic package, or
having particular technical concerns.  It's just that the improvement
from 2 to 3 is rather small, and 2 works perfectly well and people are
used to it, so they keep using it.  There are nice tools that
help port your codebase from 2 to 3 with fairly little effort.
But, you can also keep your codebase on 2 with zero effort.
So people choose zero over fairly little.

If you're starting a new project and you get to choose between 2 and 3,
other things equal I'd say use 3.  I've kept using 2 basically because
it's the path of least resistance.  I'm somewhat following the 3
situation and of course I'd use 3 if I were doing something that
benefited from it, but so far it hasn't been an issue.

Eventually the main Linux distros will include 3 instead of 2 by
default, and we'll probably see more migration then.  Right now I type
"python" and get 2, so I use it.