Been using python for 7+ years now. Does everyone really think people are willing to adopt 3.x anything...? The reality of it is every place I have worked (and currently working at). Is bound by 3rd party tools and what ever interpreter they built against. Mostly that 2.6,2.7 right now. And it does not look like anyone will be switching anytime soon.
Features look great, cant wait to "play" with them. But that;s about all. Play.
I certainly can't speak to big enterprise companies, but we've used Py3 in production at the last 2 startups I've worked at, and I use it extensively in my own side projects.
I certainly understand it can be somewhat tedious to convert legacy projects -- I've had to do it a few times myself -- but for any new dev, I'd highly recommend using Python3.
It's come to the point that Python3 is the assumed default for any new project - If someone wants to use Py2 for a project, they better have a compelling reason.. Almost every library we'd want uses Py3, or there's an alternative that does (such as PIL->Pillow).
I find it rather annoying when I go back to a Python2 project and have to constantly jump through hoops to avoid what I know are solved problems :/
Admittedly, my experiences (like yours) are anecdotal - But to answer your question, from what I've seen, Python3 is used in production quite a bit.
Everyone is aware of this reality. Everyone was aware of this reality when the transition was planned. It's been years now and we're still maybe halfway through the transition and that's ok.
I've done some internal work written entirely in Python 3.3. We largely did it as a "proof of concept" to try out the new language. And yeah, we did indeed have dependencies. No complaints.
Going back to 2 is kind of a bummer when you add up all the little niceties you get with 3(.3): unicode native strings, smarter import system, yield from, keyword-only arguments... at least those were the features I used. It has some other stuff that I never got around to touching.
I don't understand why you are being downvoted for your data-point. I've not seen 3.x used anywhere in anger either. But I've seen plenty of people embarking on new 2.7 projects. That's just my data-point too.
I understand why GP is being downvoted. He presents his anecdote as a general trend, dismissing python3 and its features as play without providing proofs.
Well, some people are bound to already installed interpreters. And those come with Linux distros. Many of which will be using Python 3 as the default for their 2014 releases (Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch). Plus these distributions are helping/pushing 3rd party Python developers to port to Python 3.
In corporate environments basically nobody uses Fedora, really nobody uses Arch, and some people use Ubuntu. RHEL7 will be new in 2014, and it will have Python 2.7. We can expect RHEL8 to come with Python 3, in 2017, and the migration to that should be almost complete by 2021. I wish I were exaggerating.
Mostly interested by Python3 because of asyncio (formely tulip). Trying to beat nodejs at its own game. I'm waiting for PyPy Python3 compatible to be released to do some comparisons. Anyway PyPy seems to already beat nodejs, Python 3 will just make working with async code easier.
I'm feeling optimistic about Python 3. For personal and work projects I've been writing 3-compatible code, and am hoping to have a production system using it by the end of the month.
I think everyone is expecting a really long tail to the transition, but we'll get there eventually.
Features look great, cant wait to "play" with them. But that;s about all. Play.