It was confusing for a while and broke some stuff. I haven't personally experienced problems in a while though. Mistake? No. It fits in with Arch's personality and made sense. It'd have been a mistake for Ubuntu to do it at the same time ofc!

I started to specify my python preference in my #! (ie #!/usr/bin/python3) in my own programs. If everyone did this the move would be much easier.

As a full time Arch user the change was a little annoying at first but now I am perfectly happy using Python3 as the default because all my Python shell scripts and system installed packages work under Python3. I can simply work in a Python2 virtualenv when I need python2.

Yes, I use Arch, and I think it was a mistake. Symlinking python to python3 breaks the assumption of virtually every Python dev out there; if you maintain an Arch package that has Python components, you usually have to sed replace the python shebangs with python2. Totally goes against Arch's normal "keep it simple" philosophy.

Yes, tons and tons of confused people popped in on all python IRC channels. Arch devs seem to think their users know everything, but there is enough evidence that not every single arch user reads all the details.

yes. using "python3" to run Python 3 would have been possible without breaking existing scripts. Also you can switch your entire infrastrucutre to use "python3" without breaking anything. I don't say switching to Python 3 was to early or the worst thing in the world. I'm just not sure if changing the "python" symlink to "python3" was great.