People used to complain about the way Python changes were breaking their code. So it was decided to restrict all the non-reverse compatible changes to a separat

People used to complain about the way Python changes were breaking their code. So it was decided to restrict all the non-reverse compatible changes to a separate version called 3 and to stop breaking things in 2. That probably allowed Python to become more popular than it would of otherwise, but at the cost of a significant fork. So what are you going to do? Either way has downsides. And it isn't like developers really have a lot of power to guide the course of a language. Lua is an excellent example of this. If you want to write a Lua program you probably want to target version 5.1 . The developers have released 5.2 and 5.3 but uptake has been fairly minimal and it's a problem because 5.3 is a Python3 like fork. You can lead but that doesn't mean that anyone will follow. The Python 3 thing could of gone a lot worse (or better) depending on what you think of Python 3. Ultimately the issue is that different people have different ideas about where a language should go (if anywhere) and no faction of developers or users have ultimate control. It isn't anyone's fault, it is everyone's fault.