I'm not sure there is a good way to do a breaking change to a programming language in a good way. That said, given that python 2.7 is being continued to be mai

I'm not sure there is a good way to do a breaking change to a programming language in a good way. That said, given that python 2.7 is being continued to be maintained - but not with new features - for such a long time, and letting python 3 evolve quite quickly until it's now actually beginning (finally, around 3.5ish) to have features which are really appealing to many users (the async stuff, type hinting, etc), I don't think they've done too badly. They could have made it quicker to happen, but since python2.7 is still a very good language, and works stably on practially every OS you could want, why try to force a change until people are ready? People bitch about it [the changeover] a lot - not because it's terrible, but because it's lasting such a long time. AFAIK, NO mainstream OS is shipping python3 as the main python, or even as a default installed python, yet. Most big libs work in python3 now. I reckon in 5 years time python3 should be the default install, with 2.7 as the legacy extra package for people who need it. One way that could have been helpful (and may even be possible?????) would be a -2k flag for python3 which runs in python2.7 compatibility mode, or something. I dunno.