== Reversing my view on Python 3 for new general code: avoid it Just about exactly two years ago I wrote Python3NewCode, in which I waved my hands a bunch and then said: > Ignoring [my handwaved issues] as ultimately unimportant, I don't > think there's any reason not to write new, non-sysadmin code in Python > 3. I take all of that back. In retrospect I was being too nice to Python 3 back then and I was wrong to do so. Here is my new view: ~~you should avoid Python 3 even for new code because there is [[very little to gain from writing in Python 3 Python3NoBenefit]] and significant downsides to doing so~~. (Part of those downsides is that the things that I so blithely handwaved away did not in fact go away and remain as real issues today, two years after I wrote [[that entry Python3NewCode]].) The spark for this reassessment is twofold. First, I have not actually written any of my new Python code in Python 3 (for all sorts of reasons I'm not going to belabor). Second, [[Alex Gaynor recently wrote 'About Python 3' GaynorAboutPython3]] and this got me thinking about the whole situation and my feelings. The big problem with Python 3, per Gaynor's [[article http://alexgaynor.net/2013/dec/30/about-python-3/]], is that ~~the Python 3 ecosystem is a ghost town~~. Regardless of whether or not you have Python 3 available on any particular system, the reality is that almost no one is writing Python 3 code. The practical Python ecosystem, the one where people will answer your questions and develop interesting new modules and [[interesting Python things http://pypy.org/]] is Python 2. [[Useful deployment options ../web/RethinkingAvoidingApache]] are in practice Python 2 ones. If you choose to write in Python 2, you get to take advantage of all of this. If you write in Python 3, not so much. In exchange for giving up all of this [[you get very little Python3NoBenefit]]. Most people will find no killer, must-have feature in Python 3 to compensate for the risks and problems you are taking on by using it. (There are some modules that are only available for Python 3. My impression is that for the most part they come from the core Python developers, precisely because all outside people who are developing modules understand that most of the actual Python programming happens in Python 2.) Given the complete shambles of the Python 2 to Python 3 transition and the resulting uncertainty about what's going to happen in the longer term, I can't recommend starting even greenfield development in Python 3 unless you have some quite strong reason for it (ie, something important that you can do in Python 3 but not in Python 2). Certainly I reverse my previous position; there's no strong reason to write new code in Python 3 and some good reasons to avoid doing so. Python 2 is here and good today. Even today, Python 3 is still a 'someday maybe in the future' thing. (At this point I'm not sure if a genuine Python 2 to Python 3 transition will *ever* happen. The really pessimistic future is that Python 2 shambles on as an increasingly creaky zombie for the next decade, Python 3 effectively fails and becomes irrelevant, and as a result Python itself is abandoned for other languages.)