> It was too many changes, all at once. Yes, this is indeed a problem. You could argue the Macbook Pros also suffer from this. But at some point, you've got to

> It was too many changes, all at once. Yes, this is indeed a problem. You could argue the Macbook Pros also suffer from this. But at some point, you've got to make the changes. Since Python 3 was already a breaking change, is it better to suffer a bit more in the short term and lay the foundations for the future? In a way, this trade-off of short-term vs long-term is what responsible people do every day. Brushing your teeth, going to college, etc. Sometimes the easy path is the wrong one. Most religions are fairly clear on this, too ;) But it does rely on a (perceived) gain in the future. For some people, Python 3 just isn't a great gain. And to be honest, it's only in later 3.* versions we've seen the really useful things. Even then, for some people Python 2 was enough, just like for some people bash is enough, or 640k or memory. It's still a hard question, one with no definitive answer. Economically speaking, does one major port cost more than multiple breaking changes over time? You might think spreading the cost out is better, but this only works if reputation doesn't suffer. Which is, again, very hard to quantify. But we're kind of past all of this. Python 2 is legacy, Python 3 is still actively developed. It isn't a discussion worth having, because it isn't a discussion anymore. Maybe next time (Python 4 anybody?), we can look back and learn something. I just want people to know why it was changed, that there was some thought behind it, and that it wasn't arbitrary. Python Enhancement Proposals are easily my favourite "feature" of Python.