Python 3 is killing Python

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 10:17 PM, Fabien <fabien.maussion at gmail.com> wrote:
> My two cents as a new pythonista and a scientist: isn't python2 killing
> python?

You're new to Python, and so you correctly want to work with Python 3.
That's fine. That's excellent, in fact. You're starting out the right
way, and avoiding all the problems that Py3 specifically set out to
solve.

However, people-new-to-Python is not the only audience that the
language supports. Everyone who *already has code*, written for (say)
Python 2.5, wants some sort of assurance that it will still be
runnable. It's a matter of trust; python.org implicitly promises that
it's not a waste of time writing code in Python, and that's a promise
that would be broken by cutting off Py2 support.

The problem isn't Python 2, nor Python 3, nor even the fact that there
are two Pythons. The problem is that a lot of people don't understand
when to choose one or the other, don't understand what the promises of
support are, and (perhaps worst of all) keep hearing FUD about how
Python 3 is killing Python. And so the confusion perpetuates.
Eventually the world will get past that, but in the meantime, we have
to deal with these sorts of storms-in-teacups from people who simply
cannot comprehend what's going on.

ChrisA