Not to bring back an old debate, but I simply want to point out the obvious: many data scientists disliked Python 3.x. I work with Python people who dislike Python 3.x, and we are still using mostly 2.7, because everyone feels comfortable with it. The upgrade seems to be a large imposition, with zero gain.
Well, it is understandable. Winds are changing though...
The lack of (enough) incentive for upgrading used to be a good excuse but with 3.8 we are getting a few performance updates that are hard to ignore. Also, many projects in data sciences are dropping support for legacy Python so sooner or later data processing pipelines will have to catch up.
Yes, upgrading is unpleasant, but it is becoming a matter of hygiene.
Given the amount of mojibake I've had to clean out of databases I'd have thought that data scientists would be the first to latch on to sane Unicode handling instead of the willy-nilly string handling inherent with py2.
