> I think the situation in terms of public mindshare is much worse now than it was in 2015

Ok in 2015 it was a pain but with Python 3.8 it's actually a only joy & fun in my opinion.

> the balkanisation of the community could well be more problematic than 2 vs 3

If you could call Python2 code from Python3 or vice-versa as easily as you can do with async then it would be comparable.