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Comment by WilliamEdward | Hacker News Reader

Why would anyone like python2 so much better than python3 that they would want to fork it into its own language? The two languages are already incredibly similar and python3 has a much larger active community.

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Because I have 20-year-old code in the wild still running. I know python won't change out from under me; I do not have that confidence in python3.

This doesn't make sense; if python 2 continues being developed then it will change for you. Besides, no one says you have to upgrade if you've found a version of 3 that you like, so what exactly is changing out from under you? The leap from 2 to 3 was not even that drastic. The entire changelog is incredibly short.

It's having to write the parenthesis after print. No one wants that and it's been by far the largest complaint the community has about python3.

> No one wants that

Why would you write a statement that is so demonstrably false?

Probably because it's hyperbole to get a point across.

I don't know if the author was intending to be hyperbolic -- I for one prefer Python 2's print. I would've preferred keeping print the way it was and using a new keyword for the new functionality.

The change in the print statement was also what put me off from Python 3 for a long while. But back then there where also no big benefits to be had from moving to 3. Nowadays I even prefer the print function as it makes it easer to convert to log functions.

I still don't see why the print function justifies trying to keep the language alive. You don't prefer that print act as a function and not a keyword? Maybe you don't, but is the change really not worth giving up 2?

Yup. By no means a developer, but I Python was the first programming language I learned and I always felt it was my native language. I was happy to stick around with 2.7 for as long as it was there, but I guess this is the motivation I needed to learn Ruby or Haskell. :-(

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