Stop using Python 2. All of the justifications I'm seeing in this thread are complete non-starters. If you want to use a 3.3 feature, install Python 3.3. Are you seriously suggesting that we revert to the problems of 2.x, discarding all the effort that's been dumped into Py3 compat over the last 7 years, because you don't want to install a software package? It's really common to need to add extra sources to a package manager for new versions of things, and it's also common to need to build your own packages. It shouldn't be that hard. Be grateful that at least there's a possibility you can use the system Python, since Ruby communities don't really have that luxury.