<story><title>Python 2.x vs. 3.x survey results</title><url>https://wiki.python.org/moin/2.x-vs-3.x-survey</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Stubb</author><text>Speaking from the perspective of someone who doesn&amp;#x27;t code in Python: I recently considered doing so for a scientific computing task at work but quickly ditched the notion. Python 3 seemed the recommended choice for a green-field project, but good luck getting anywhere with it due to poor library support. Want to access a MySQL database, generate 3-D graphics, or use someone else&amp;#x27;s code? Good luck with that! Python 3 may have been released five years ago, but uptake among developers appears negligible. So why not use v2.7? Several features in v3 looked appealing, and documentation makes it clear that v3 is the future. So I decided not to invest in a language that can&amp;#x27;t make up it&amp;#x27;s mind and stuck with R.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pwang</author><text>I wish more people in the dev community would ponder your experience and decision-making process.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think Python 3 was a mistake.  I understand the reasons for doing it, and the difficult decision making process there.  I also have tremendous confidence in core dev team and Guido to make the right decisions even if they are difficult.&lt;p&gt;However, I think calling it Python-next or -NG or something non-numerical would have been better, and CLEARLY signalling that Python 2.x IS NOT DEAD.  The big problem is that 3 is bigger than 2, and by advertising that 3 is not yet ready but 2 will no longer be supported, there is sort of an Osborne effect (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Osborne_effect&lt;/a&gt;) that is hurting adoption of Python 2 AND Python 3.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Python 3 is the future&amp;quot; but &amp;quot;Python 2 is also the immediate future&amp;quot;, like for the next 3-4 years AT LEAST.  My company is undoubtedly going to need to support it for well beyond that.  There is no problem here.  Python 2 evolved so much over its point revisions that the idioms in 2.7 for instance are vastly more concise and improved from 2.4.  Would it have made sense for someone to not learn Python 2.4 just because eventually 2.7 would improve or deprecate some of the things they&amp;#x27;d learned?&lt;p&gt;Looking through the main python.org page through the eyes of a beginner, it&amp;#x27;s hard to find clear guidance on this.&lt;p&gt;My company is squarely in the space of promoting the use of Python for scientific computing and data analysis, and it&amp;#x27;s difficult sometimes to get folks in the community to recognize the difficult job of ambassadorship to other languages, like R, Java, C#, etc.  That being said, there is still &lt;i&gt;tremendous&lt;/i&gt; adoption of Python for data and scientific purposes, so I&amp;#x27;m not really worried.  I&amp;#x27;m just sad to hear that a potential newcomer was driven away by unclear messaging.&lt;p&gt;(Especially to stick with R... &amp;lt;shudder&amp;gt;  :-)</text></comment>
<story><title>Python 2.x vs. 3.x survey results</title><url>https://wiki.python.org/moin/2.x-vs-3.x-survey</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Stubb</author><text>Speaking from the perspective of someone who doesn&amp;#x27;t code in Python: I recently considered doing so for a scientific computing task at work but quickly ditched the notion. Python 3 seemed the recommended choice for a green-field project, but good luck getting anywhere with it due to poor library support. Want to access a MySQL database, generate 3-D graphics, or use someone else&amp;#x27;s code? Good luck with that! Python 3 may have been released five years ago, but uptake among developers appears negligible. So why not use v2.7? Several features in v3 looked appealing, and documentation makes it clear that v3 is the future. So I decided not to invest in a language that can&amp;#x27;t make up it&amp;#x27;s mind and stuck with R.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Ixiaus</author><text>This is unnecessarily pessimistic. Most of the major packages support Py3k and if they don&amp;#x27;t it&amp;#x27;s usually very simple to port over (it usually means combining 2to3 with some bytestring to string conversion debugging).&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not in the scientific field so forgive me if I&amp;#x27;m being parochial but I&amp;#x27;ve been writing software in Py3k exclusively for a year and half now. Using scientific computing, distributed queue processing, webapp, CLI utilities, etc...&lt;p&gt;[EDIT] Better words.</text></comment>