Python 2/3 compatibility

["Goodman, Alexander (398K)" <al...@jpl.nasa.gov>]

Hi all,

For those out of the loop, Lewis has been spearheading the effort to move
the OCW codebase to Python 3 (
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CLIMATE-854). We are also in the
process of moving over our conda packages to the conda forge (
http://conda-forge.github.io/) in order to help automate building them
across multiple python versions.

Personally while I support making OCW Python 3 compatible, I also want to
reiterate that I think we should also strive to make our code backwards
compatible with Python 2. That means, for example, we should be using
things like imports from future at the top of our module files as needed.

As I have said, I think many users in the Earth Science community will be
sticking to Python 2 for as long as they can, and that is the impression I
have gotten after talking with many other people. What do you guys think?

Thanks,
Alex
-- 
Alex Goodman
Data Scientist I
Science Data Modeling and Computing (398K)
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
California Institute of Technology
Tel: +1-818-354-6012