Hot damn . I pulled Both gungir and lust dagger ! <| sep |> While I agree broadly that the Python core devs have screwed the pooch with Py 3 and are in no hurry to clean up the mess they ' ve made , I honestly can ' t agree with a single one of his arguments . Hell , many of his arguments against Py 3 are things I consider arguments for Py 3 . I don ' t believe his 30 % stat , but I also don ' t believe JetBrain ' s stats . They ' re based on PyCharm users , which isn ' t exactly a majority of Python devs . What ' s more , the stats are dominated by web developers , which is a group for whom Py 3 is unquestionably better . They are almost entirely shielded from Py 3 ' s problems by the frameworks they ' re using whose developers have dealt with Py 3 ' s alltextisUnicode shitshow for them and by the fact that webapps run in carefullycontrolled environments . Py 3 ' s changes also haven ' t killed Python . But they have killed Python for a certain class of program for which Py 2 is eminently suitable , namely UNIX commandlineoriented programs and other bytesoriented stuff . Py 3 ' s fundamental fuckup vs Py 2 , IMO , is that it not only insists on treating all text as Unicode when we still live in a world full of strings of unspecified encoding URLs HTTP , email , UNIX filenames , but is so fundamentalist about it , it just doesn ' t give you the tools to work with encoded strings or undo its magic decoding when it ' s picked the wrong encoding . What I think is killing Python is that the core devs are sticking to the GIL , which makes Python 2 or 3 a secondclass citizen in a world where even smartwatches are multicore . IMO , the core Python devs definitely fucked up in making Py 3 incompatible with Py 2 without offering any substantial benefits . If you have working Py 2 code , there really isn ' t a lot to be gained by porting . This has been , IMO , the major reason for the slowness of adoption amongst seasoned Py 2 devs . Py 3 is a much more newbiefriendly language , but offers at best trivial benefits for experienced Py 2 coders and is in many cases a total PITA . So Zed might be right in that regard , in that developers faced with rewriting their projects to support Py 3 may well decide there ' s basically bugger all benefit in rewriting working Py 2 code for Py 3 , whereas rewriting in , say , Go may bring a 1020 x speedup plus the ability to use multiple cores . Certainly , as someone who mostly codes the commandline programs that Py 3 is unsuited for , I ' m starting a lot of new projects in Go , seeing as my weapon of choicePy 2 has been EOLed . The UNIX command line is basically bytes . Py 2 ' s text model is also the POSIX text model , so it Just Works with other POSIX tools , like find or grep . You have to fight Py 3 all the way to get correct POSIX behaviour . Py 2 is also largely insensitive to environment settings , and will keep on chugging in situations where Py 3 dies in flames , like SSHing to a machine that doesn ' t support the locale set on your local machine .