I would recommend to even use pyenv (https://github.com/yyuu/pyenv) that will allow you to install any Python version in your home directory (i.e. not fucking up your system installation).

If you maintain many FOSS libs like I do, together with tox it's priceless.

Homebrew installs software into /usr/local last time I checked so unless you are doing something really strange like manually overwriting system files, you'll be hard pressed to fuck up the whole system. Personally I'd install homebrew into /opt/homebrew.

The real advantage of pyenv is being able to install all interpreters in all versions. If you're developing libraries, you're going to need that.

Like I said. Python3 works for regular python users.

What if I want to distribute a package to an audience that doesn't have a strong Python background.

What would otherwise be a simple 'pip install' just turned into a complex multi-step process to install a new version, update PATH, and use virtualenv to avoid conflicts with the default install used internally by the OS.

These all seem like 'simple' fixes to a regular Python user but they set a huge barrier-of-entry for others.

'Just use [insert python specific fix]' is a UX failure for a language that emphasizes usability.

To reiterate. Python3 is ready for regular python users/devs. Not so much for the rest who consume python applications.

Yes but when you want to distribute a program at the end of the day, you don't want to have to bundle python with every release or ask the use to install it, which makes a lot of people choose python 2 since it is ubiquitous.

python 2 is not ubiquitous, it is not installed by default on Windows

YMMV, but in the past, I've found it fairly easy to just have windows users install python(x,y) for scientific computing purposes. It's huge, but afterwards, most things just work. Anaconda is also a good choice.