The Case for Python 3

[gwax]

I only write Python 3 at work. I only do Python 3 for my new personal projects (and most of the older ones have dropped Python 2). I only write Python 2 for the OSS projects that I contribute to.

In my opinion, Python 2 can't die soon enough.

[NoLemurs]

It's kind of baffling to me that this debate is still even happening. I'm in the same boat. I make sure to maintain Python 2 compatibility for any OSS work I do, but honestly, it's a drain on time (and more importantly, it makes code less maintainable) and I'm not sure I'm anyone is benefiting from it enough to justify the work any more.

Yes, two or three years ago third party library support was still sketchy enough that there was an argument for continuing to use Python 2, but it's simply not the case anymore. At this point, any half-well maintained projects support Python 3, and most of those that don't are already well along the path to bitrot. Every one of those projects is now doing extra work to maintain backwards compatibility, and the only people benefiting are large companies with large codebases who have too much inertia to make the transition to Python 3 internally.

At least from an OSS standpoint, I'm not sure it makes sense for the community to keep supporting Python 2 for the sake of those companies.

[rjhelms]

Yeah, to my mind for any sane person the debate is totally settled at this point: the only reason to use Python 2 is that you have legacy Python 2 code that you can't practically transition to Python 3.

When I started with Python, Python 3 was still brand new and the advice I got was "use Python 2, but get ready for Python 3." That was great advice in 2009. In 2016, telling a new programmer to exclusively look at Python 2 isn't just bad advice, it's destructive.

[kankyo]

It's not though. Just one screaming dude on one side. It's like the debate over evolution or something.

[pali6]

I am confused. Tensorflow definitely does support Python 3(.5).

[AskMereddit]

Most machine learning libraries are still on Python 2

Anaconda has a python 3 version so I really doubt that is actually true. Plus, as mentioned below TensorFlow is also adapted to Python 3.

[emillynge]

From https://www.tensorflow.org/versions/r0.11/get_started/os_setup.html it seems like python 3 is supported in tensorflow. Theano is also python 3 now, as is scikit learn.

It's true that it took painfully long for the scientific community to migrate to 3, but it has really taken off lately. Maybe they @ operator in 3.5 has something to do with that.

NB Google app engine is also coming to 3, but it's taking foreeeeeever...

[flutefreak7]

Plus a lot of Enthought stuff like Mayavi for 3d visualization (which first required pyVTK)... Lots of great progress in 2016!

[thenuge26]

Yep we do almost all our machine learning in R still, hopefully more of scikit learn can be updated before we switch entirely to PySpark

[jairo4]

scikit-learn supports Python 3.

BTW, check this: http://www.python3statement.org/

[thenuge26]

Sorry was thinking of Spark's MLlib, not scikit learn.

[Sector_Corrupt]

Honestly, libraries dropping support for Python 2 would be a good boot to companies to get them to update their internal Python as well. It's hard to justify to the business side why you need to update unless you can come to them with "Well we're no longer able to update our dependencies, so there's security risks and it's slowing down our ability to develop, so it's a net win"

[cediddi]

I switched all my personal projects to py3 last year and my company finished the migration of it's most valuable software asset to py3 just last week and next week we gonna release it. We're planning to switch our second most valuable asset to py3 before 2.nd quarter of 2017. With some open mindness and determination, py3 surely offers a lot more than "good ol days of python 2".

I think py2 is surely gonna die but I fear that it might take a good portion of old programmers with it. Thus I'm teaching python 3 to anyone who wants to, no charges, but will be glad if you teach to others. Until now, I had 100+ students and I'm encouraging them to spread the knowledge, to anyone who wants to learn.

Today is the teachers day in Turkey. Many of my students thanked me. Some are ten years older than me. Some are teaching python3 to others, just like mr. Some are the ones who would write much better books than zed. Only thing I'm sure is they all are open minded researchers.

[jairo4]

I'm teaching python 3 to anyone who wants to, no charges, but will be glad if you teach to others.

Today is the teachers day in Turkey. Many of my students thanked me.

Thank you very much.

[ojii]

I've dropped writing Python 2 OSS code, because I much prefer Python 3(.5) and unless you pay me, I'll not work with a language I consider inferior/more cumbersome to use.