Why and How to Migrate Your Python 2.7 Scripts to Python 3

If you are still using Python 2.7, you should consider migrating your scripts to Python 3.x.

Python 2.7 will no longer receive maintenance after 2020. Initially, the official end‑of‑life date was unspecified, but it has now been set to January 1, 2020.

We thank Python 2 for its loyal service over the years, and now it’s Python 3’s turn to take the stage.

Big issue: Python 3 is not backward compatible with Python 2.

This is generally a good thing. Python 3 corrects fundamental design flaws and redundancies in the language, leading to cleaner and more elegant code, but it also means that Python 2.x code does not automatically run on Python 3.

How should you get started?

If your code still runs on Python 2, that’s understandable. Most popular PyPI packages now support both Python 2 and Python 3, and many major projects have pledged to drop Python 2 support soon. The official porting guide ( https://docs.python.org/3/howto/pyporting.html ) provides recommendations to help users migrate their code.

The fact that Python 2.7 is no longer maintained after 2020 does not mean your application will suddenly stop working. If your project is stable, reliable, and has no security concerns, you may not need to fix something that isn’t broken. You can even maintain both Python 2 and Python 3 projects side‑by‑side, managing them easily with separate conda environments.