As part of a data science/machine learning course, I have taught many, many beginning students how to use Python 2 and (starting a year ago) Python 3. The real

As part of a data science/machine learning course, I have taught many, many beginning students how to use Python 2 and (starting a year ago) Python 3. The reality is that given what beginning programmers learn, they hardly notice the difference between them. Adding parentheses to print() and some explicit conversions to lists are all that is necessary to convert most code that beginners see. The last I looked at Zed's book, the same is true for his coding examples. Overall, I believe for newcomers it is more useful to learn Python 3. Given this background, no employer would reasonably believe you cannot learn Python 2 quickly. They will likely even be impressed you are future-proofed.