Python 3 is killing Python

OK, no. Most modules/libraries are ported to Python 3. The minor ones that aren’t are those that are dead upstream, and you shouldn’t be using them, and/or they should be easy to port yourself.

I really think the real reason is that people, especially English-speaking, but others, too, have been sticking their collective heads in the sand about this ASCII/Unicode situation for far too long. If, on the other hand, you started to use Unicode strings as soon as possible in Python 2, your Python 3 “port” could be two additional lines:

    if sys.version_info.major == 2:
        str = unicode

Oh yeah, the future_builtins module does not exist anymore (for obvious reasons), so its import needs to be wrapped in a try-except clause:

    try:
        from future_builtins import *
    except ImportError:
        pass

So call it five additional lines. That it literally all the porting I had to do to make two Python 2 programs completely runnable in Python 3 and Python 2, unaltered.

The problem is not Python 3. The problem is people using byte strings and Python 2’s implicit conversions of them without actually understanding what a string is.

It has definitely been a painful process to port from python 2 to 3. We have one developer who has been pushing hard for this, and while it may not be a defensible business position we believe it's the right thing as members of the community.

There are some nontrivial improvements in Python 3 (async) that we want, but more than that we don't want python to split and languish. We think that by taking a step into python 3 (and porting our remaining dependencies) we can make a small dent.

This is sad. In my 25+ years of programming, python is the only language I've ever liked.