Most popular Python packages now support Python 3

- 2008-2012 Python 3 as a language becoming usable

- 2012-2016 Libraries gaining Python 2 compatibility (and dropping 2.4 and below)

- 2016-2020 Applications porting now that most libraries are compatible.

- It is easier syntax and string-handling for beginners. Else, look for someone who started learning Python with Python 3 and ask them about their experience. You probably won't find many here.

- There are more resources online for learning Python 2. Many MOOCs happily teach Python 2.

- ~5% of very popular libraries are not ported yet. Many unpopular libraries will never see a port. Some use this as an argument for switching to Python 3, but that is like being blind and being told to be happy that the number of inaccessible websites went from 10% to 5%, telling you there is no reason to look at those inaccessible websites.

- Many companies still use Python 2.

- Many distributions come with Python 2 installed.

- Switching from Python 2 to Python 3 is but a minor annoyance, mostly in paying the print-tax. Switching from Python 3-exclusive code to Python 2 is downright hell.

The reasons not to learn Python 2 and start with Python 3 are:

- Python 2 is deemed legacy and will see no security patches after 2020.

- Python 2/3 is painful for some developers and maintainers. They'll cloud this is in a "move Python forward" that is reminiscent of the "move the web forward"-movement (by deliberately breaking designs for older browsers, or forcing the user to download a font to make their layout work properly).

- Python 3 proponents don't care about you learning a new language, they care about adding 1 to the dwindling adoption count of Python 3. They see Python 2 as competition, a ghost from the past. Here the reasons they give you have nothing to do with you wanting the easiest path to mastering Python. These are either political or selfish reasons.

You'll be in the minority on HN if you go Python 2. But realize that HN's stance on Python is not a beginners stance. They use features of the language that you won't use for another 2 years. They have very strong opinions on 2 vs. 3, alternating between calling it a completely different language, and the same (but improved) language, whenever it suits their argument.

Pick wisely.

Carbon has Python 3 support in Github, it just hasn't been released to pypi yet. https://github.com/graphite-project/carbon/blob/master/setup...

There are tools that use the AST to translate Python 2 to Python 3, such as python-future. (Unfortunately, one of the things the core Python devs botched about the transition is that they put an awful, incomplete, broken one of these named 2to3 in the standard Python distribution.)

Racket's approach is rather different; they just support all the different Scheme/Racket syntaxes and standard libraries PLT has ever supported, with the same runtime. This doesn't include MIT Scheme but there is a syntax for the subset of it used in SICP. I don't think they have anything that converts code between the syntaxes.

I wouldn't mind seeing Python also use that approach -- a Python 3 runtime that runs Python 2 code (and maybe borks your Unicode, which is fine because people who stay on Python 2 clearly don't care that much about Unicode, and that's their prerogative). I'm convinced the only reason no such thing exists is that the first person who makes it would become responsible for everybody's awful old Python 2 code. Maybe in 2020 someone will make it and charge money for it.