The developers issue "bugfix" releases of older versions, so the stability of

existing releases gradually improves. Bugfix releases, indicated by a third

component of the version number (e.g. 2.5.3, 2.6.2), are managed for stability;

component of the version number (e.g. 3.5.3, 3.6.2), are managed for stability;

only fixes for known problems are included in a bugfix release, and it's

guaranteed that interfaces will remain the same throughout a series of bugfix

releases.

The latest stable releases can always be found on the `Python download page

<https://www.python.org/downloads/>`_. There are two recommended production-ready

versions at this point in time, because at the moment there are two branches of

stable releases: 2.x and 3.x. Python 3.x may be less useful than 2.x, since

currently there is more third party software available for Python 2 than for

Python 3. Python 2 code will generally not run unchanged in Python 3.

<https://www.python.org/downloads/>`_. There are two production-ready version

of Python: 2.x and 3.x, but the recommended one at this times is Python 3.x.

Although Python 2.x is still widely used, `it will not be

maintained after January 1, 2020 <https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0373/>`_.

Python 2.x was known for having more third-party libraries available, however,

by the time of this writing, most of the widely used libraries support Python 3.x,

and some are even dropping the Python 2.x support.

How many people are using Python?