I followed your arguments, and frankly you continue to be more right over time. We happened to get lucky that Python and Data Science and then by extension AIML

I followed your arguments, and frankly you continue to be more right over time. We happened to get lucky that Python and Data Science and then by extension AIML aligned because that really did carry Python over the 2-3 chasm. There should be a book in the style of the Mythical Man Month about discontinuous tech stack transitions (Python 2 to 3). Or ecosystem splitting issues (Phobos/Tango), or Package Management (C++). I don't view your engineering mindset as pessimism, I view it as realist. My take is that engineering is 80% failure mitigation, but if we don't do solid failure analysis we will only get lucky 1/5 the time. I think this is why we see so many software projects fail. Backporting Python3 features to Python2 would have made the transition go faster for everyone. You are on a hike with a bunch of scouts, huge range of gear and physical and emotional ability, you don't bitch at the fast ones to go slower, you don't bitch at the slow ones to go faster, you redistribute the load, and if the fast ones are still fast, you give them enough supplies to start setting up camp ahead of the rest of the group.