Ask HN: Do you primarily use Python 2 or 3?

2 pointsmattangriffel9y ago3 comments

I'm teaching a college course on Python in the Fall and wanted to present some data on the market penetration of Python 3 within the Python community.

Here are some things I've discovered: - There are more monthly posts on Stack Overflow relating to Python 3 than Python 2 since April 2016. - 57.94% of survey respondents in London use Python 2.7 for work, while 33.03% use Python 3.4. - For personal use, 49.79% of survey respondents in London use Python 3.4, while only 44.42% use Python 2.7.

But I'd like to get firsthand data from a larger and more representative community.

So if you code in Python, do you primarily use Python 2 or 3?

3 comments

cauterized9y ago

I've yet to work in a company that began developing its primary Python codebase after 3 matured. Nor any company that had the engineering bandwidth to prioritize upgrading a working Python 2 codebase to 3 over work that directly impacted customers or business.

If I start a new codebase for a toy or throwaway project that doesn't have to be importable into one of those codebases, I'll start it in Python 3. If I remember to use it when creating the virtualenv. After all, with the primary project in Python 2, 2 is still my system default.

btgeekboy9y ago

I used to put it off, especially because (a few years ago) I was working with a package that used Twisted, which was Python 2 only. (Not sure if it still is.)

Since PyCon a month ago, however, I've been making a conscious effort to use Python 3. Python 2 has less than 4 years of life left! [0]

[0] https://pythonclock.org/

CyberFonic9y ago

I have been using Python v3 since 3.1 was released. I didn't have a large code base at the time so I found moving to v3 easy and have since developed all existing and new systems using v3.x. The only backward compatibility issue being Google App Engine SDK which requires v2.7. But even there I have had no problems with differences between the dialects.

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