This abstract future of Python has already been ceded to something that is not Python, just as once the abstract future of Perl was Python. Ruby once tried to take the mantle but failed. Go is now taking a lot of mindshare (from 2 or 3 more I wonder?) and I agree the Python 3 crowd just makes Go more likely to succeed, which is terrifying since it's probably the worst possible choice. My message is simply despair and accept the inevitable: Python will fade -- by all means keep using it, people still use Perl, scientist will be using it for a long time -- but the rest of the software world will pass you by. If you care about what the rest of the world is doing at all, you can help make sure the future passes to better general purpose high level languages like Nim or Clojure or OCaml, and for specific niches like scientific computing goes to the likes of Julia eventually. Anything but Go.