This is a good article, of interest to people even outside web dev in the python community. I did not know that python 3.1 was that much slower than python 2.x (python 3.0 was, but this was well known from everyone).

His point about writing new python 2 code for easy 2to3 application is a good one: porting existing projects to python 3 is quite difficult, because it cannot always be done without breaking API, but writing new code which can be easily ported is much easier. There still needs better support to easily use 2to3 and test its output in an automated fashion.

I am also delighted to see known python hackers to recognize the lack of python 3 usage, and that maybe the roadmap needs to be somehow modified.