Steven D'Aprano writes:
Frankly, I believe that pushing the meme that "Python 3 is different" is a strategic mistake.
I agree that it's strategically undesirable. Unfortunately, the genuine backward incompatibility, as well as the huge mind-share already garnered by what I consider wrong-headed advice from certain quarters have made pushing the meme that "Python 3 is very nearly the same" untenable. It's hard to beat something like "it's not yet time to use Python 3" with a nuanced explanation.
had my experience would have been different. It's bad enough to have to tell people "Python 3 is currently lacking some critical libraries, particularly third-party libraries" without also telling them (wrongly IMO) "oh, and it's a new language too".
That's why I propose the C to C++ analogy. True, C++ does introduce a lot of new features, but most programmers migrating from C to C++ don't learn to use them properly for years, if ever, I'm told. Note also that I don't propose this as PSF advertising. I proposed it as a response to Mark's question, "what should I tell my readers?"