i am moving on to just python3

[Skaperen]

the reason i have decided to go ahead and abandon Python2 before its EOL and move on to just Python3 is because Python2 does not support using * for arguments in a function def statement followed by named options spelled out explicitly. that is:

lt1/forums /home/forums 2> py2
Python 2.7.12 (default, Dec  4 2017, 14:50:18) 
[GCC 5.4.0 20160609] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> def myfunction(*myargs,myopt1=None):
  File "<stdin>", line 1
    def myfunction(*myargs,myopt1=None):
                                ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>> 
lt1/forums /home/forums 3> py3
Python 3.5.2 (default, Nov 23 2017, 16:37:01) 
[GCC 5.4.0 20160609] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> def myfunction(*myargs,myopt1=None):
...     return
... 
>>> 
lt1/forums /home/forums 4>

that plus better handling (still not perfect) of bytes and Unicode.

[Larz60+]

so.... many other reasons

[Skaperen]

but no others have made it difficult to make code work in both versions. my original plan was to stop makings things for both versions until Python2's EOL. but i finally had cases where doing def the way shown in my example. i only had 2such cases. and i pondered over then last night and today. then i decided to my schedule up so i could stick with the cleaner form. i could have made things work for both, and even wrote some code for it. but i decided the code ugliness was not worth it.

[Larz60+]

the rewrite of python 3 was extremely well planned, and the resulting product shines because of that.
The conversion from one to the other is not so painful, the rewards are great.