Noob in Python. Problem with fairly simple test case

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 7:27 AM, Emile van Sebille <emile at fenx.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, July 16, 2015 at 3:11:56 PM UTC-5, Chris Angelico wrote:
>
>> Where's the latest survey results? I think the numbers don't agree
>> with you any more.
>
>
> Not that there's a source for that info, but a quick survey of yahoo results
> certainly continues to show more v2 activity.
>
> --anytime--
> python v3 -- 1430000
> python v2 -- 1890000
>
> --Past month--
> python v3 -- 386000
> python v2 -- 554000

Yes, and this is skewed somewhat by the Linux distros that ship Python
2 as the system Python, which leads to automatic use of Py2 in various
places. Even if you don't correct for that, these figures show *at
most* 30-50% more Py2 usage than Py3, which hardly justifies Rick's
statement that the "vast majority" of Python is 2.x. Different metrics
differ in the exact figures, but none show a 99:1 ratio or even 90:10
for any recent stats. The most skewed I can find puts Py2 at about
90%, of which a significant slab is 2.6, and 3.4 didn't exist yet:

https://alexgaynor.net/2014/jan/03/pypi-download-statistics/

(There are some 3.4 downloads in the stats, but they come from beta
users; when that blog post was written, 3.4 final was still several
months away.)

And the post makes several caveats about repeated downloads from eg
continuous integration systems, which naturally will tend to be skewed
heavily toward the old stable version. No, the "vast majority" of
Python is no longer on a single version.

ChrisA